Not Even Turnips
by Misplaced.Something
Summary: Four wizards out on the town are supposed to get in trouble, even as they count arguments and flirt wildly. They're not supposed to scream at Revival Death Eaters, or get caught running from said creeps. Obviously, these four missed the memo.
1. WOWDNDABJ

Chapter One: Where One Weasley Does Not Disprove Any Blonde Joke

The Pygmy Puff Argument was #1 in Kyrie Orlowe's list of Overdone Arguments Between One Theodore Lupin and One Victoire Weasley. Not number one as in her favorite, but number one as in the one that started the many that followed. It was no surprise that, also, this argument was the most common. And, marking that, it was practically expected that this was the argument the two barely-adult exes would choose to return to during the Happy Graduation, Class of 2019 outing to Hogsmeade.

"You gave her exactly what I told Monica to tell you I wanted!" Victoire shrieked, throwing her hands out behind her to either side. Her pretty face was contorted into the grimace it had recently taken to anytime around Mr. Ted Remus Lupin. Her, being Kyrie, shifted a little uncomfortably, but had been reassured many times by Victoire that there was no enmity between the two of them. Lysander, Lorcan, and their friend- Merlin, his name had been mentioned at least a dozen times, and it was so painfully ordinary that it always managed to slip her mind- plodded beside Kyrie, speaking quietly. Kyrie wasn't sure why they'd come- Fred, Kyrie, Teddy, and Victoire were loud, while these three were quietly odd.

Ted shuffled on her other side, his responses hurried whispers compared to Victoire's passionate yells. "Monica didn't tell me anything, and Kyrie had been nagging me about-"

"You got me Fifty-Seven Swedish Dishes (Low in Fat, High in Taste!).!"

"You wanted to be a chef!"

"You were calling me fat, you-"

Kyrie, the dark haired mess plodding along next to Teddy, elbowed Fred Weasley the Second, their signal.

"Guys, chill," Fred said. Kyrie would step in, but, from experience, knew the argument only grew more heated. "This is the night to have fun."

"Yeah," Kyrie mumbled, glancing through a shop window full of brightly clad, slowly moving mannequins. "I'm sure the two of them remember fun. Somehow."

Ted and Victoire lapsed into a silence that reminded Kyrie of a volcano moments before eruption. Every now and then Vic sighed rather huffily, her breath rising up in haughty puffs. Those were the thick clouds of sulfurous gas belching up from the depths of the Earth, a warning sign. Ted marched stiffly beside her, looking for all the world like one of the skeletal trees growing- but not thriving- in the ashen soil of the volcano's base. One of the trees soon to be plowed over by boiling magma.

The group turned off the road to enter their old haunt, The Three Broomsticks. They were assaulted by the heady scent of butterbeer and mint, and the easy chatter of half-lit wizards. Under the light of many candles (and it really was ridiculous that wizards stubbornly refused to embrace the miracle of electricity, even it magic made it malfunction)

Kyrie observed the weary angles of Ted's face. Rumors around school always said he inherited his half-starved look from his father, Remus Lupin, who died in the famed Battle of Hogwarts, right beside his beloved Nymphadora Lupin.

Poor kid, Kyrie felt pity bubble in her stomach whenever she thought of it, but knew better than to let Ted know. It was a sensitive subject for him, one that would lead to Ted's completely out-of-character rant about responsibility, which would then lead to the coldest phrase she'd ever heard pass through Ted's lips.

"They obviously didn't want me..." He said it far to often for Kyrie's liking. "They knew the risks, the dangers. They knew what could happen, yet they went anyway, and they died, leaving me with nothing but rainbow hair and a liking for particularly rare meat. They didn't want me enough to swallow their pride..."

Things usually got very ugly from that point, and Fred was almost always the instigator.

"You selfish little git! You wouldn't recognize sacrifice if it danced in front of you naked!" And the one time Kyrie had attempted to mediate, they'd both exploded on her.

"Your parents weren't even involved, Orlowe, you've no room to speak!"

Obviously, the whole subject was just too explosive for even these close friends to bring up.

Fred ordered seven pints of Butterbeer and brought them back to the table, three in one hand, four in the other. The three other boys applauded this impressive feat, with whoops and whistles, and settled down to spike it with just a hint of single-malt whiskey. They were all of age in the wizarding world, and it tasted rather good, and to hell with parents, for those who had them anyway, so they drank it.

"So how are the little ones, Ted?" Victiore sniffed over her spiked butterbeer. "I assume you're still practically living with the Potters..."

It was a backhanded sort of peace offering, allowing conversation, but nothing too friendly. Add some insult, make him work for his forgiveness. Ted was used to this, Kyrie was used to it. This tentative type of truce had been attempted at least twelve times a week by the pair, and had failed because of some tiny misstep in the painstakingly choreographed dance. "Your hair looks nice today," from Teddy in the morning, instead of a, "Your hair always looks nice." An "Is that what color your hair's going to look like?" from Vic before a wedding reception, instead of a "Maybe you could switch from fluorescent green to something more formal?"

"Not so little anymore," Ted said, glancing to the side of the table and sipping from his mug. Kyrie thought he'd mention Lily's newest obsession- Quidditch, making her dad proud- but he just shut up.

Four nice words from Ted for Victoire, Kyrie scratched four mental chalk marks in her brain in the V column.

"Hmm." A neutral sound. No point. Kyrie sipped her drink, sighing over the lip at Fred. Fred rolled his eyes and nodded. Hopeless.

Kyrie lost track of points very soon after, but the last she remembered it was V: 7, T: -30. But that didn't matter much, since Victoire had been up to at least 40 before she started on argument number 12- "Why can't Teddy Lupin talk more? Is something wrong with him?" She couldn't seem to accept 'shy' as an answer.

Kyrie definitely would not have lost track of points- she never had before, it was somewhat of a sanity-keeping exercise for her- had it not been for one Fred Junior slipping her spiked after spiked butterbeer. If he didn't have his father's good looks, well. She probably would've taken them anyway.

"Kyrie, I am telling you, graduating does not mean you are mature," Fred was chuckling. "Nothing will make any of us mature."

"Fred- Fred," Kyrie said, but then glanced over at Victoire and Ted. They were fighting again, scaring poor Lorcan, Lysander, and their male friend that still eluded naming by Kyrie. This argument sounded like thirty-something, she couldn't remember if it was thirty-seven or thirty-nine. About his ungratefulness. Kyrie's least favorite, most acidic.

Time to leave, even if Freddy was beginning to get a little brave and she could see the thought of kissing entering his brain. Guys were so slow. She guessed friends were worth it though.

"Wellll, I think it's about time we all started heading over to the Potters' for some nice coffee and a lot of suspicious looks. Who's in?" Kyrie exclaimed, steadying herself on Fred's shoulder. (Man, he had some nice muscles...)

Luna's children and their friend opted out, but Weasleys could never turn down a cup of anything at the Potters- and their godson and his best friend especially could not. So on marched Kyrie and Fred in front, with Ted and Victoire arguing loudly behind them.

"I think they love each other," Kyrie murmured to Fred. Fred's red eyebrows furrowed as he turned his head away from the road and towards the tipsy witch.

"Why?" Fred wrapped his arm around her bare shoulders, bringing her lips closer to his left ear. Not like the couple in question could hear anything above their fever-pitching yells.

"Becaus-"

"This is our time to bring back the glory!" shouted a voice down the street. Instinct shut all four up as they scuttled to the right, into the shadow the moon cast against the line of shops. Fred's arm dropped from Kyrie's shoulder and into his cloak, grasping his wand.

"Why didn't we Apparate?" Victoire whispered harshly, but no one replied with the obvious- splinching while drunk would not be enjoyable.

"The way has been paved before us, all we must do is follow," the voice boomed, and this time, their fear subdued, they heard the loud cheer that followed.

A black mass of cloaks bobbed into view, at least eighteen people. Their hoods stood up into a razor sharp point, cutting into the starry sky. A few of them stumbled and leaned on one another, clearly drunk, far more drunk than even Kyrie. "All hail the-"

"Shhshsh!" Another cried, the ringerleader perhaps. "We must use the advantage of surprise!" More cheers.

"What the hell is this?" whispered Ted, but he was answered all too soon.

"Morsmordre!" The incantation tore through the air in a jet of sickly green, blooming and crackling into existence. Before their eyes a skull appeared, a serpent protruding from its mouth. It writhed as if tortured. After nineteen-some years of dormancy, the Dark Mark was back in full swing.

Then, a scream, not blood-curdling really. Blood-thinning, adrenaline-electrifying.

"Bloody. Hell," mumbled Fred.

Lights flickered on down the street, front doors rasped open. Stunning spells and much nastier curses flew through the air. The mass of black hoods exploded apart as the-(Death Eaters?) scrambled to safety.

So much for the element of surprise.

Any self-respecting, mentally stable person would have used this diversion as an opportunity to get out of dodge, which is exactly why Victoire Weasley did the opposite.

"Oi, you idiots!" Victoire shouted, left index finger unsheathed and brandished in the air. "What do you think you're doing, putting that thing in the sky?" By "that thing," she meant the Dark Mark. Upon closer inspection, one could see the glint in her eyes, the deadly glint of a person who was not afraid to act on impulse. Perhaps she was hoping to let out her Ted-fury on a suitable victim, one who was easier to hate than the ridiculously nice scrawny half werewolf boy.

Of course, the cloaked figures were much too busy regrouping and fighting back, casting fiendfyre in every direction, to ever pay attention to the slight blond witch. A few screeched incantations of "Crucio!" were sprinkled here and there, and the girl was generally ignored, except by Teddy- who had the only blush of men or wizards visible clearly in the dark. He tried in vain to pull her back into the shadows with the rest of the group.

But Victoire was having none of this. It was not in her DNA to be ignored. So she marched with purpose past a flaming chimera to the center of the street, took out her wand, and pointed it back at her own throat.

"EXCUSE ME!" Her magically amplified voice bounced off the walls of the shops. "BUT I WAS WONDERING WHAT IN MERLIN'S BEARD YOU LOT THINK YOU'RE DOING!" It was sort of comical the way the street fell awkwardly silent, wands poised in midair. Even the flaming creatures of fiendfyre turned their heads to view Victoire with interest.

In retrospect, Kyrie diagnosed Vic's insanity to a small number of things.

Firstly, there was the insurmountable gamble of genetics. Her mother was a hot-headed French woman, with a dash of haughty veela attitude. Her father, one of the many Weasley children was...well, a Weasley. This consequently meant that she would plunge headfirst into any situation without the slightest bit of consideration. Then of course, there was the trump card: Molly Weasley. Short, plump, yet unbelievably fiery, Grandmother Weasley's hot-blooded nature endowed Victoire with the sense that anything could be accomplished through sheer force of will.

Secondly, Victiore was a girl who had just experienced an unpleasant encounter with an ex. Her hormones were raging, her mind was a blur, and her heart was probably hurting just a bit. This would have been a deadly combination even without Grandmother Weasley's rage serving to triple the effects.

All things considered, it was a bad time for Baby Death Eaters to spring the Dark Mark in the middle of Hogsmeade.

And, all things considered, it was definitely no surprise that, with all of the cloaked eyes finally resting on the focal point named Victoire Weasley, reason screamed past every checkpoint in her fiery body to finally slam into her brain. With a quick step and glance backwards, towards her fellow semi-innocent bystanders, Victoire's regained reason powered her legs to speed up and her right hand to fish for the wand she just knew had to be in one of her pockets. Damn fashion for dictating so many of them.

Of course, her three friends took off ahead of her, fleeing the twenty-some drunks who were fleeing the fifteen or so Hogsmeade residents that had left their comfy homes to attack the old symbol of fear. Yet, as Kyrie and Fred ran as fast as they could, neither of them even wasting their air to make a crack about thanking Merlin for Quidditch, Teddy lagged behind, staring over his right shoulder with his right hand trailing behind. Until, of course, Victoire grabbed it and took the lead. Then he focused his all into running, the pattering one, two, one, two of his feet against the cobbled stones. Only a very, very small part of his mind dwelled on Victoire's survival, Victoire's hand in his, Victoire's hair. But that part of his brain was used to being preoccupied with Victoire, so he barely noticed.

"What," huff, "the fuck," huff, "were," huff, "you thinking?" asked Kyrie, the venom that would otherwise be lacing her words preoccupied fueling her next few blocks of running.

"I'm not...quite-sure that she...was!" Teddy answered, his hair now a shock of white. It always bleached out when he was terrified.

Apparently Victoire was too busy surviving to retort, though her fingernails did dig deeper into Ted's hand, a pain that he would have suffered willingly for any number of hours. Unfortunately for Teddy Lupin, his legs were knocked out from under him, and he fell flat on his face. The normally graceful Victoire didn't have a chance to gain her balance, and she too, was dragged down onto the rough cobblestone street.

Blood was pounding in Kyrie's ears as she ran with Fred Jr. The trace amounts of Fire Whiskey and Hippogriff gin in her system were doing everything they could to incapacitate her, and of course there was that Weasley by her side, huffing rather loudly for a guy who claimed to have a six-pack.

So it was virtually impossible for Kyrie to hear one of the pursuing Death Eaters cast the Locomotor Mortis jinx that took down both Teddy and Victoire. Nor could she hear Vic's cries for help as the two were overtaken, bound with ropes, and dragged into the forest. She didn't notice anything was wrong until she chanced a look behind her.

"Shit," was all she could manage when she saw only black cloaks in pursuit and not a glimpse of Ted's white hair.

By that point, Fred realized there was no hope in outrunning the Death Eaters, whether they were drunk or not, so he took hold of Kyrie's upper arm and the cracking sound of Apparition interrupted the screams of the fighting and the huffs of the running.

They collapsed in a patch of tall, dewy grass, to the sound of Fred swearing and moaning profusely. Kyrie rustled around until she faced the sky, and she could see the sickly green scar of the Dark Mark in the air. They hadn't gone far at all.

"What...what's happened, Fred?" She swiped at the sheen of sweat on her forehead, but to no avail. The damp grass surrounding her only made her feel more sticky and hot, and it seemed impossible to catch her breath. "Fred," she repeated, her voice cracking. A cricket began screeching its tune somewhere in the vincity of her left ear. She swatted at it without looking. "Fred, speak to me."

In answer, Fred lifted his right forearm so that Kyrie could see the bloody gash, as though someone had scooped away half of his tricep with a cereal spoon. "Splinch," he groaned. "Not so bad, but not good in these circumstances."

"We need to get you to St. Mungo's." Kyrie sat up so that she might examine his wound more closely, but she was distracted by the expression on his face; jaw slack with weary surprise, nostrils flared, eyes focused on something just behind her.

With tiny hairs on the back of her neck standing at a Nazi attention, Kyrie turned to find a tall shadow blocking out half of the night sky, but (ohh, the irony!) the Dark Mark was still plainly visible in the other half. It was impossible for her to see any stars with all that darkness in the way.

Kyrie took the stunning spell full in the face. The Order would have been proud.


	2. How the Good Guys Lose

**A/N: So, we are bad. We've already broken the posting schedule. OH WELLLLLLL. The early bird gets the dinosaur. errr.**

Chapter Two: How the Good Guys Lose (the battle)

Teddy imagined being able to draw his heels against the back of his thighs and kicking out, attacking the Muggle way against this Death Eater so against Muggles. But, of course, the Death Eater was dragging him by his legs, so all he could do was squirm from right to left- which only hurt him, ripping up the skin on his face further. He glanced over to Victoire. She was Stupefied, he guessed after yelling what idiots they were to the whole of Hogsmeade the Death Eaters were a bit more upset with her than her friends. He'd heard some crows of victory a few minutes past, but he was praying to Merlin they just burned something down. Not Kyrie, too- Fred would've been smart enough to Apparate to the Potters, Fred was always smart, there was no way-

"We got the other two!" came a deep voice from the forest. "Well, I did. That damned son of mine is a fuckin' pansy. Cryin' about hitting girls or some crap." A man with a dented hat and a beard longer than his mask fought his way out of the forest. Something with Kyrie's hair was dragged after him, with some liquid-_ blood,_ Teddy realized with a groan- following. A boy, shorter and slumping underneath his costume, trailed after him, pulling what was obviously Fred with no difficulty. And Fred was not easy to carry, Teddy knew that from experience. Fred was conscious, too, but bleeding more than Kyrie and staring blankly at the sky above the trees, unlike Teddy. Teddy tried to get his attention, but his dry throat barely croaked.

"What was this girl thinking?" Another cloaked figure stepped into the forest. "Idiot girl." The figure flipped Victoire onto her back with its shoe, nudging her in the side experimentally. Muggleborn or halfblood, Ted realized. No wizards ever doubted another witch or wizard was Stunned.

"Her friends aren't much better. This one Splinched. Splinched! Ha. And this whore was like, "Ooooh, we've GOT to go to Mung-achk!" The man that pulled Kyrie into the clearing grabbed his throat before ripping his wand out of a fold of his cloak and casting an orange spell towards Fred. He wheezed in a few breaths after his spell hit, before yelling, "Expelliarmus!" Fred's wand shot across the ground.

"You didn't even take his wand? What kind of moron are you?" a fellow Deatheater asked.  
"The best kind of moron," the bearded man sneered. "The kind that can kill you if you don't watch your back." He kicked Fred soundly in the gut to make his point.

Fred didn't make a fuss about it, just rolled to his side and clutched his abdomen. Ted was impressed by this. He caught Fred's eye and nodded in encouragement.

"Got something to say, Whitey?" This was the bearded man's son talking, his wand pointed at Teddy's chest. "'Cause if you do, you might at well say it to all of us."

Teddy considered himself to be pretty smart, and as such, he knew well enough to keep his mouth shut. "No, I have nothing to say sir."

Kyrie, however, had been recently unStunned and couldn't hold her silence. She wriggled angrily at Fred's side, her hair picking up dead leaves from the forest floor. "Like hell, _sir_! What he wanted to say is that you're all making a big mistake taking us like this, because as soon as you give us an opportunity, we're going to turn around and bite you in the ass!"

"Oh-ho!" The boy crouched down by Kyrie and twirled his wand around in a confident circle before resting the tip in the hollow of her throat. She froze and gazed defiantly up at his polished Death Eater mask. "Biting..._very_ kinky. I don't know about the others, but I'm very open-minded about things of that nature..." He trailed off, and Ted could hear the smirk in his voice.

"You insolent pig," Fred said in a monotone, as though reciting the laws of transfiguration. "While we're at it I might just chop off your-"

"Enough!" This was the ringleader speaking. "I've had enough of this nonsense! Take them out and bring them to our base! We weren't planning for this, but-"

"Where exactly_ is _our base, Boss?" one of the Death Eathers interrupted from the fringes of the circle.

Boss leaned his head back in frustration, then lifted his wand quite suddenly and sent a green jet of light in the direction of the offending Death Eater. The man collapsed without a sound and his mask fell off. It rolled across the clearing until it fell flat in front of Ted's face. He turned away from it, trying not to vomit.

"As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, knock them out and take them to the_ base_. Any questions?" No one said a word, but there was a general shuffling of feet and an awkward cough or two.

"Good," Boss chirped. The Death Eaters took this as the signal to descend upon the prisoners with their wands, ready to stupefy. "And to those of you who have just joined our group, what happened to Mr. Goyle is not uncommon. I shall not put up with stupidity among our clan. I shall not insult the Dark Lord's memory with ignorance. If you want to live, then you stay smart. That means you, carrot-top." He directed this at Fred. "I've heard that the Weasleys are infamous for their dull wits. Perhaps now is the time to break family tradition."

Ted didn't waste the breath it would take to tell them that Fred's intellect threatened Hermoine's Granger's status as a know-it-all. He didn't mention that _Victoire_ had inherited the Weasley stupidity. Instead, he succumbed to a magic-induced slumber.

A few hours later, he woke up in a small room. Fred, Kyrie, and Vic were sprawled around him, but none of them were tied up or Stunned. Of course, none of them had wands either. He struggled against a wave of vertigo to sit up, shaking his head slowly.

"You're finally up then?" Kyrie slurred, blinking her eyes up at him. The other two didn't stir.

"How... long... have you... been up?" Teddy forced out precisely. He rubbed his hair, seeing in his periphery that it was currently as red as his blood. He hoped it wasn't hiding any blood.

"A few hours." She tried to sit up, but just fell back down. After a few minutes of staring at Teddy expectantly she held out her hand. "Help me up, you buffoon."

Teddy pulled her up. She sagged immediately. "Did they hit you with a different spell?" Teddy asked, a little worried.

"Chill, I just don't have your tolerance for being unconscious." It was a running joke between the two of them, how many times Victoire had accidentally knocked him unconscious with one spell or another. She took a deep breath, staring at Fred the whole time. "His dad will kill us."

"Why?" Teddy asked. "What about Bill and Fleur? Or even your father?"

"They won't tell my dad, idiot." She shook her head. "Bill and Fleur love you. And George Weasley has already lost one Fred, if he loses this one I'm not sure what he'll do."

"Quit worryin' about my dad, Orlowe," Fred groaned. "He's probably too old for you and definitely too married."

A smile lifted her lips. Teddy was shocked to realize his friend had fallen in love with a Weasley herself- after all the crap she gave him about falling for Victoire!

"But he's so much more handsome than you," she said, rolling her eyes but not dropping the smile.

Fred rolled over to lay on his back and stare at Kyrie from the left corner of his eyes. "Yeah, Orlowe, I'll make sure you're around when I tell him that. Sure he and mum'll be thrilled about it."

"Quit being a drama queen," Kyrie muttered, nudging him with her bare foot. "Did they- they took my shoes? What the fuck."

"It was probably that boy. Seemed right charmed by you," Fred commented, rolling to sit against the wall. Ted thought about scooting back a few feet to sit against the other wall, but decided he didn't want to chance getting sick. "Probably jerked off to the thought of your perrrrrrrfect feet gracing the same soles he held in his very own hands."

Kyrie's face twitched, not in humor, but disgust. "Mention that again and I'll do something interesting with your shoes." No one mentioned, although they all thought, that this insult was very lackluster in comparison to her usual fiery comebacks.

The four young adults remained quiet for a few minutes, all thoughts running along the same train- how exactly had they managed to get here. Then, a rectangle of light appeared and spilled over them, interupting their thoughts with a blinding pain in the eyes. A silhouette swooped above them, its wand clearly visible.

"Anyone moves and they get a Cruciatus Curse in the face." No one moved. "Which one is it, Boss?"

Another voice replied. "The ginger, you know...the one with the bloody arm?" Boss seemed to be in a better humor than before, but how long ago had "before" been?

Ted contemplated this as the goon lifted Fred by the collar of his shirt and and began dragging him into the blinding abyss.

"Where are you taking me?" Fred asked, but got no answer. "Hey, I'm talking to you! Where are-"

"Stupefy." The curse was bored coming from the man's mouth, and Fred went limp. Ted suspected that this was the bearded man from that mysterious "before" time. He didn't like that guy very much.

Fred's shoe was the last that Ted saw of him, and as the party of three turned to the left, he thought idly of shadow puppets. The door slammed shut and it was black again, the puppets gone. Ted figured he was probably going insane or something. Whatever.

"You know," Kyrie said, rather calmly, Ted thought, for a girl who'd just seen the guy she loved being pulled, kicking and screaming, away- or the wizard equivalent of it, anyway. "I think I'd rather have him here and bothering me about my shoes. It's cold without him."

"Yes," Victoire sighed. "His flaming hair does have a fire-like quality that mine can never achieve. Heh, heh." Her sad little joke fell flat on the concrete floor, twitching a few times before dying of blood loss.

Ted had never felt so morbid in his life. "Who's next, I wonder?" His eyes readjusted to the light, and he sat up, glanced over at the two girls.

"I don't intend to find out," Kyrie announced loudly, then she was standing and pounding heavily on what she thought was maybe a door. "Let us out! Let us out RIGHT NOW, or so help me..." She continued in this fashion for a minute or two.

Ted didn't know what to do with her. He stood slightly behind her with one arm hanging in the air uselessly, wanting to pat her shoulder, but afraid he might lose an appendage if he did so. Meanwhile, Vic paced in a tight circle.

Kyrie collapsed in a trembling heap, maybe sobbing, maybe seething. There was a terrible silent moment. The calm before the storm. Then all hell broke lose.

Ted wasn't sure but it sounded like, "YOU SON OF A HINKYPUNK I'LL GUT YOU WITH SPOON IF YOU SO MUCH AS!" before Victoire managed to tackle her and give her a good slap in the face. Ted stuffed his knuckles into his mouth so he couldn't burst out laughing. He was going crazy, they'd taken Fred, but Victoire hit Kyrie, and he didn't know why it was funny but it was.

"Kyrie, listen to me," Vic said calmly. "Pounding on that wall- which is probably not even the door- it will not help anything at all. And if he's dead then not even your undying love for him is going to help him. So you need to shut the fuck up and collect all these marbles that you've spilled on the floor. That is the only way you will help any of us." And with that, Victoire scooted away to sit in the corner.

"Thanks," Kyrie said. "I needed that." She rubbed her head, totally ignoring the red spot developing on her cheek. She scooted back and leaned against the wall that, minutes earlier, Fred had leaned against. "We need to figure out where we are." She cracked her back and shook her head. "It's cold. It's wet. I'd assume a basement, but only if these wizards are idiotic enough to have forgotten to put a climate control charm on the place."

"I think we can assume they just didn't think it mattered," Victoire drawled, rolling her shoulders backwards. "We don't have wands anyway."

"Well, sorry for trying," Kyrie grumbled.

Ted wasn't paying attention, his right ear was pressed against the damp wall. He slid a foot to the right before coming to a rest, leaving his ear against the wall. There were grunts and yells, but he couldn't make out anything distinct. He moved his ear away from the wall. Nothing.

Kyrie had joined him at some point- had he noticed? Why didn't he? She was right in front of him...

"An awful Silencing spell," Kyrie grumbled. Ted was still thinking about not noticing her. "Good job, Teddy." She pressed her ear against the wall again.

"I bet if it was me, you two would be celebrating," Victoire announced from her corner. That woke Teddy out of his stupor- an argument. That was normal.

"Oh, yeah, you're right. We'd sit, all three of us together, roasting marshmellows above a fire, talking about how smashing this place is," Kyrie replied, scoffing. "Shut up."

Victoire didn't pay her any attention, instead crawling forward and sitting in front of Teddy. "What do you think, then, Mr. Lupin? Would you rather it be me in there, screaming?"

Kyrie shuddered, but stayed out of the fight.

"No?" Teddy asked, still completely out of it. "Did I... leave you behind when you taunted these idiots in Hogsmeade? I should have, but I didn't."

"You should have?" Victoire shrieked. Teddy thought her eyes were pretty, as they flashed in the dim light.

"Well, yes, had I not been _totally in love with you_, I might have had some common sense and realized that we were drunk and they'd come after you first. Then maybe I would have realized Harry keeps me in shape with his biweekly family Quidditch games, and that I could outrun them if I got a headstart, but nooo, I looove you and I had to be an idiot and wait for you to catch up! As if holding my hand would help you at all!" Teddy rambled, throwing his arms up in the air and catching Kyrie in the shoulder. "Oh, sorry," he whispered meekly, losing energy.

"You... what?" Victoire asked.

Oh...shit. "I uhh-I can't remember," Ted floundered, in search of a distraction."Listen, do you hear that?"

Dubious, Victoire tilted her head to the side, her knowing smile plain in the darkness. "I don't hear anything, Teddy, but what were you saying?"

Ted had the sudden urge to be sucked up in a black hole, or maybe shrivel up on the concrete floor and die a quiet death. While contemplating this, he was rudely interrupted by a series of shouts and one loud crunching sound on the other side of the wall. Someone was about to have the biggest headache of his or her life. Ted_ hoped_ it was the bearded man, or maybe his son. He _prayed_ that it wasn't Fred.

Minutes passed. Kyrie's feet tapped against the floor while Victoire's paced the twelve by twelve meter room. Ted sat, with his ear against the wall. The yells subsided, but before Teddy could assure Kyrie it_ wasn't_ death silence, the rectangle of light fell over Teddy and part of the floor, just for a few seconds. But those seconds were enough to throw an unconscious Fred Weasley on the floor in front of the three teens.

"Oh, Merlin, he's dead, MerlinMerlinMerlinMerlin," Kyrie hissed, falling to her knees and grabbing his arms. She rocked back and forth, rubbing her hands over his hairy forearms. "But he's still warm and he's dead and-"

"Healed," Vic mumbled from across the unconscious Weasley. "Sick bastards want us to be healthy before they chop us into tiny little pieces."

Ted scoffed at them. "Not necessarily. They might not chop us into pieces. They might bleed us dry or feed our souls to a Dementor..."

"I would choose death over this," Kyrie snarled. "This uncertainty is just...awful!"

Some things were worse than death, they knew. Harry told them once, at a quiet Christmas gathering, about a flayed, sad little bundle at King's Cross station. He relayed to them horrors of its helpless cries, and its sickly immortality. Tom Riddle's fate was worse than death. Worse, perhaps, than a Dementor's kiss, for at least those souls were whole as they faded into oblivion. Yes, some things were worse than death.

But sitting there in that dark room, the trio had difficulty thinking of any.


	3. When Guys Are Stupid

Chapter Three: When Guys Are Stupid (the good kind)

Fred woke up to quiet and dark a few hours later. No one had moved, Kyrie stayed hunched over Fred, and Victoire sat across from her, her legs crossed under her. Ted thought her feet had to be even more asleep than Fred was, but he stayed with his ear pressed against the wall a few meters away, watching the two girls and the unconscious red head while listening to the empty space of the room next door.

"Give me some space, Orlowe," Fred mumbled, rubbing his eye lids with a brand new skin-covered arm. "A wizard can only handle so much."

Kyrie scooted back to sit by Teddy, wrapping her arms around her legs without a word. Teddy wondered if maybe he wasn't the only one changing, the Kyrie he knew definitely would have come up with a comeback to that...

"Rie, you're okay right?" Victoire asked, ruffling Fred's hair, but looking at Kyrie. "You can beat up on him, even though he Splinched, you know that right?"

"Mmm," Kyrie mumbled, staring at Fred's wince without registering it. "Yeah." Fred blinked over at the black haired girl, just as Teddy's hair changed from an ochre indifferent to a dark blue concerned.

"Teddy Lupin can take care of it," Fred mentioned, pushing himself off of the floor to loom above the other three teenagers. "Maybe Victoire'll help me try to get us out of here, instead of sitting around staring? I can't believe you guys haven't been doing anything," he sneered, glancing away from Kyrie. She continued staring where he was.

"Kyrie did try, you selfish idiot," Teddy forced out, each word slowly following the one before it. "Just because you woke up and we were worrying about you doesn't mean nothing else happened in your absence."

That seemed to remind Victoire of something. "Yes, Fred, something did happen. You talk to Kyrie, I have something to talk about with a certain Lupin."

At this point Ted grabbed onto Kyrie's forearm with the intention of never letting go, even as she slowly pulled away with pat on his shoulder. He watched with an expectant sort of horror as she drifted across the room to reconcile herself with the newly healed and slightly humbled Fred. Then he ducked his head to stare at the floor. Maybe if I just sit here long enough, he thought, she'll go away and never speak to me ever again.

A pair of dainty white sandals came into view, lime green toenails peeking out from them. That was her favorite color, that one girl to whom he had professed his undying, and rather inconvenient, love. He wondered if she knew that he absolutely detested the color green, and that he only wore it sometimes for her benefit. Probably not.

"Your hair is pink, Ted," Victoire observed meekly. She collapsed down beside him. "What does that mean again?"

"Complete mortification," he deadpanned. To himself he thought, man up. It's best to get it over with now, just drink it as fast as you can and get it over with- like Skele-Gro... "I meant what I said, you know. I meant all of it, even the stupid parts."

Ted expected some sort of holocaust, but got something much worse: silence. Less than ten meters away, Kyrie and Fred were having a better time of it. They were...God, were they thumb-wrestling? Why was conflict so much easier to resolve among some people?

For the first time since his unfortunate outburst, Teddy looked into Vic Weasley's eyes. Her pupils swelled to the size of buttons in the darkness. He couldn't discern brown from black, and he couldn't see any life in them, only irony.

"So, um, what are your thoughts?" he pressed lamely. "About...what I said?"

Victoire played with her fingers and very nearly smiled. "I'm not sure I have enough information to make an assessment. Perhaps you can expand on that part about you being an idiot and loving me, and all that?"

Ted knew without looking in a mirror- which was good, because mirrors were very conspicuously absent from their room- that the pink in his hair turned fluorescent and spread to his cheeks. "I'm not sure how far to expand. I love how you love green, even if I hate it. I love how you eat oatmeal every morning, even when you wake up far after lunch. I love how you are so stubborn I can't even start to argue with you without feeling completely stupid, and how you are so completely rational even when we are in what might be one of the most life threatening situations of our lives," Teddy rambled, running a hand through his rapidly growing hair.

"Oh, well that's good," Victoire said conversationally. "I mean, it would've been pretty awful if you had just said, 'Oh, I love you a lot, and I'm really quite an idiot.' "

Teddy stared at her flatly. "That is all you're going to say."

"Ink beats parchment!" Kyrie crowed.

"I meant wand," Fred grumbled. Neither Ted nor Victoire glanced their way.

"Well, I suppose I could mention that I love the way you don't even try to stop your hair from telling everyone exactly how you're feeling, or that I think it's amazing that you stand up for your friends so often, or the way you concentrate so single-mindedly on anything you're doing," she said, tapping a single lime green fingernail against her chin, tilting her head backwards in fake thought.

Teddy almost grinned. "I guess you could mention that now or then," he replied, holding the grin back.

"Thinking about it though, I wouldn't want to inflate your ego, so maybe I should just mention it later."

'If there is a later,' a voice in Teddy's head queried.

Boom, the rectangle of light appeared again. The four cringed away from it, into the walls, and they shielded their sensitive eyes. This stuck-in-a-dark-basement thing had to be bad for a person.

"Hope you're hungry," someone laughed, and threw in a lumpy sort of something. The door snapped shut, and the lump sat between the four. No one had the guts to approach it, not for a few moments.

"Well," Fred sniffed in a Percy-like manner. "I suppose one of us should put the bell on the cat."

"Good idea," Vic chimed, and she scrambled across the floor, feeling no need to stand. Wither her right hand she shoved at the lump. "It's in a burlap bag. It's-" she opened and sneered. "Fucking turnips."

"Turnips?" Fred barked a single laugh and joined his cousin. He lifted a vegetable in his hand and contemplated it. "Anyone want a bite?"

"I almost think starvation would be more desirable," Ted grumbled, disconcerted that his conversation with Vic had come to such a screeching halt.

"Yes, well...let's see." Fred took a ridiculously crunchy bite. He chewed, swallowed, smacked his lips a bit. Then he lifted the turnip once more. "To be...or not to be? Now that, is a damn good question."

And he chucked the the turnip across the room with incredible force. It slammed against the door with a hollow sound.

Kyrie picked up a turnip and tossed it in the air, watching it spiral leaf over point, to land neatly back in her hand. She tossed it a few times more, before idly pegging it spot on the back of Fred Bilius Weasley's head. He grinned over his shoulder at her, but offered no sign of retribution towards her. That was surprising- Ted knew Fred and Kyrie were sickeningly competitive- they fought to get to the Great Hall before the other. That was strange.

"Hey, Fred, I bet I can juggle more turnips than you can!" Victoire called, grabbing three or four of the strange vegetables and starting an unsteady oval of them in the air.

"That's a lie!" Fred practically yelped. "My juggling skills are finely honed, thank you

very much!"

Ted wandered over to sit next to Kyrie by the bag of turnips. She watched the Weasley cousins from under half-closed eye lids. Her head leaned against the cold wall, hair falling over her shoulders and arms. "You look content," Ted mentioned. "Strange, given the circumstances."

"Yeah, but you look happier than you have in months, yet you're in the same situation I am," Kyrie pointed out, not opening her eyes a centimeter more.

Teddy took a deep breath and shrugged. "You didn't answer my question."

"You didn't ask a question," she needled, unable to hide her grin anymore.

He half-laughed, half-groaned. "When you start being a smart-ass, I know I'm in for trouble."


	4. Why Fred is Always So Grumpy

Chapter Four: Why Fred is Always So Grumpy

Fred had a black eye. He could feel the blood pulsing behind his skin in a distinctly bruised and purple way. He leaned his head back against the wall and waited. None of the others were awake, or they weren't announcing their presence at least.

A postage stamp of light opened above them, but Fred had the presence of mind not to move, not yet. A stepladder appeared from nowhere, and a shadow blocked out Fred's current sun. The boy they called Winthrop descended. He was the one, the son of the bearded man.

Fred straightened up and scooted away from the wall. "Hey, Winnie. Come here often?" he rasped, clearing his throat soon after.

"Quit calling me that, Weasel," Winthrop hissed, before the stamp of light disappeared. "Lumos!" His wand lit up, casting shadows across his average face. Fred thought he looked rather plain in normal light- he was very disappointed he wasn't completely unfortunate looking- but his features cast in the shadows of his wand looked down-right demonic.

"If you wake everyone up, you'll just make the humiliation worse for yourself," Fred pointed out in what he thought was a very pragmatic way.

"Shut. Up." Winthrop moved his wand through the air, lighting up first Fred, then Teddy and Vic (Fred was not completely sure they were aware they were wrapped in each other's arms in their sleep, but thought it would be funny to see their faces when they woke up either way. Red was a very interesting color on both of them.), and finally Kyrie, spread eagle on her stomach with a line of drool slipping from her open mouth. Winthrop's wand steadied on the girl.

Ted and Vic stirred, groaning and rustling about. "Don't wake her up, Thropy," Fred mumbled, rubbing his forehead. Winthrop was an instant migraine.

"I'm serious, Weasley, I'm the one with a wand here," Winthrop said, straightening his spine and tilting his face into a sneer.

"Yeah, yeah." But Fred's unconcerned response only spurred Winthrop into prodding Kyrie with the tip of his wand.

"Hey, whazzuh deal?" she mumbled and swatted at her side where Winthrop had jabbed her.

"Feisty," he gushed, looking back over his shoulder at Fred. "Even in her sleep. I really like it when they have some fight in them." His lips parted slightly, and his eyes grew as mechanical as a shark. "I like to watch the hope leave their eyes."

Fred knew he had to keep it cool if he wanted to avoid confrontation, and honestly poking was far enough. He changed the subject. "So how are things going on the outside? This is what...the third location in a week? It seems like you guys are getting pretty desperate, like maybe you have no idea what the hell you're doing. Why else would we keep moving? Am I right, or am I right?"

Winthrop straightened up at these accusations and turned on Fred. "The Dark Lord's directions were very clear," Winthrop hissed. "We're purifying the world of the mudbloods and muggleborns. And this time," his tongue flitted out to his lips. "We're offing you pesky blood traitors as well."

Ohh. Fred fell unnaturally silent, He could think of no retort strong enough.

Winthrop liked this reaction, and swooped in closer. "Believe it, boy, because the only reason you're alive is that stupid Potter schmuck. Boss thinks he can get a good trade out of you." He was so close that Fred could smell the minty toothpaste on his breath. "Your lives...for his. But," his eyes flicked to Kyrie, who roused from her slumber. "I might keep that one for my own purposes."

"Fuck offfffffff," Kyrie grumbled, stumbling to her feet and taking a small step towards Winthrop. "Guess who you've been making innuendos about for the past... However long we've been here?" she asked, shaking her head. Not that anyone could see, as Winthrop's light was focused on Fred. Fred scrambled to his feet and tripped over to Kyrie, just as she started to continue. "A ha-"

Fred's hand clamped over Kyrie's mouth. "A Harry Potter godchild and a half-blood's lover, our Kyrie right here is dating a half-blood," Fred babbled, knowing anyone with a brain of their own would see the stupidity in the quick cover-up, but also knowing he was completely safe.

"A half-blood?" Winthrop's light wavered, making Fred wonder if he was shuddering because of the idea of Kyrie, Miss Attitude, had a boyfriend, or because of the boyfriend's blood status. "It's too bad he's not here, we've direct orders to kill half-bloods and down. Sympathizers this close to Potter we can afford to trade."

Kyrie shuddered, and Fred was glad. Fear was a survival instinct, and he had started to wonder whether or not Miss Kyrie Jackson Orlowe was suicidal. She nodded, a thanks. Fred removed his hand, just as the wand light moved from Fred's old position to cover the two teenagers.

"You two are too close." Winthrop oozed sleaze as he sidled into the three centimeters between Fred and Kyrie.

"But you and I aren't too close?" Fred asked, running a hand down Winthrop's right arm with an eye roll.

Winthrop squealed, waking up Victoire and Teddy, who instantly jumped from each other with faces like Fred's hair.

"I was just-" Teddy choked. "I didn't mean!"

Vic just nodded while vigorously combing through her hair. "Of course."

Fred would have laughed, but he was too busy getting another black eye. Winthrop, in a homophobic rage, had completely forgotten his wand in the heat of embarrassment, and had wrestled Fred to the floor. The man's fist connected with his face once, twice, three times. Fred remained on the concrete and took it, the pain radiating through his jaw and temple. He hoped he looked brave for the others, especially Kyrie...

"Don't ever. Touch me. Again." He puctuated his sentence with blows that threatened concussion. In a self-conscious flurry of limbs he ascended the stairway. "I was considering a treat for your breakfast today, but the ginger has me convinced that you're not hungry. Behave, and you can eat tomorrow. How does that sound?" The postage stamp light flickered out, and Winthrop's stepladder evaporated into the air.

"You little bitch!" The accused ginger shouted through the blood that gushed from his nose, but nothing more was mentioned about it. Kyrie began the tiring business of mopping him up.

"It's not your fault," Ted said. "Besides, I'm not hungry." Fred knew this to be inaccurate because almost immediately Ted's stomach began to rumble. "Really," Ted repeated, kneading his stomach to quiet it. "I'm not a breakfast person anyway."

"Me either," Victoire promised.

"His version of a surprise breakfast would have been bacon grease or something anyway," Kyrie scoffed, mopping his upper lip with a corner of the burlap bag that had contained the previous day's breakfast.

"Thanks," Fred said, but he wasn't sure if he was thanking them for their support or Kyrie for cleaning up his blood, even though she was terrified of pathogens in blood. Probably both.

Kyrie smothered a smile, before continuing with her cleaning. After a sharp look from Fred, indicating she better explain herself, she cracked- laughing all out, draping an arm over his chest and bracing herself with her hand above his knee. "I'm- I'm so sorry," she finally said, between laughter. The chuckles slowed. "It's just that, well, a combination! His face- and his squeak!- when you hit on him! And then- and then you just sound so funny with your voice all nasal!"

A snort reached Fred from across the room, but he ignored it as it was cut off immediately. "Well, I'm sorry-!" he started to remonstrate her, only to be cut off by Kyrie's laughter. He settled for glaring and she settled for smiling and mopping up his blood.

"I wonder if they're going to come back in here and heal him again. It has to get exhausting, having to keep beating him up. Maybe they'll just leave him like this this time," Victoire commented from a safe distance away. Fred glared. Some family loyalty that girl had.

"They'll probably debate what The Dark Lord would have done, kiss the feet of a statue of His Greatness, and flip a Galleon before finally deciding," Kyrie grumbled, accidentally brushing his nose in the exact wrong way. Fred tried to cover up his grimace. "Oh, man, I'm sorry!" The hand that had remained clutching his knee let go to steady Kyrie, changing her position so she was leaning over him and closer than before. A sharp inhalation- taken as pain, thank Merlin, Godric, and, hey, why the hell not?, Slytherin too, for that- made Kyrie lean in closer and squint. "Hellish light," she grumbled under her breath.

"Oh, you better not mock his name. They probably have all kinds of mock-detectors around his name or something," Victoire pointed out. "I'm hungry," she whispered without thinking. Fred stiffened, but decided to pretend he hadn't heard. But the 'hellish light' let him see Kyrie's face darken- she'd heard, too.

"Doesn't matter," he whispered, much better than Victoire, patting the hand she had placed on the floor to brace her body. She nodded minutely.

"Shoe," Fred guessed blandly. The nasal tinge to his voice had dissipated an hour ago.

"Eh, you're correct," Ted bowed out. "Your turn."

"Okay then, I spy with my little eye something...rough." This was a good one, wonderfully tricky.

Through a haze of delirious hunger, the group guessed.

"The floor," Kyrie tried.

"No."

"The wall," Teddy suggested.

"Nope."

"The other wall," Vic joked.

"Incorrect."

"Ted's ridiculous five o'clock shadow?"

"Good...but no, sorry." Fred rubbed his hands maniacally.

Eventually, they gave up, their minds to chaotic too function. They linked arms and slumped in a circle, and if they hadn't been so hungry it would have been nice..

"Let's find some constellations," Kyrie said, and then she gestured to the blank ceiling. "Over there you can barely see the outline of Ursa Major." No one said anything to this, instead choosing to pretend it more funny than sad.

"We're going to be okay," Fred promised urgently to no one in particular. "This is like...like an adventure of sorts!" His promise fell flat. There weren't even chirping crickets to comfort him. There was, however, a violently verbal stomach that filled the awkward silence.

"Merlin, I would prostitute Lysander for a turnip right now," Victoire muttered, squinting with one eye at the ceiling, her right hand cast casually across Teddy Lupin's chest. "Or half of a turnip."

"I would prostitute you for a turnip," Kyrie retorted, shoving Victoire with her foot. "So watch out."

"Murrrr," Teddy said, kicking one foot. "Has a day passed yet?"

"I want a barrel of apples," Victoire mumbled. "With pancakes. And syrup."

"I want you to shut upppp," Kyrie groaned.

Eventually, Victoire quit complaining and Teddy quit making strange sounds, and their talking faded into shallow breaths and the sounds of dream mumbling.

"Figures she'd talk in her sleep," Kyrie whispered. Her mouth brushed his ear as she talked, her body perpendicular to his.

"Figures you'd talk in her sleep. Can I have a few minutes of sleep here?" Fred asked, knowing even as he said it he was being grumpy.

"Fred. You like me."

"Yeahh, so?" Fred asked, a little upset blunt Kyrie had finally gotten around to mentioning it.

"Why haven't you done anything yet?" she asked, scooching closer.

"This is not a romantic situation-"

"Liar. You could've made a move back in Hogsmeade. You weren't going to, though," Kyrie interrupted.

A pause. "Fred, if you have fallen asleep-"

"I'm not going to, okay?" Fred finally responded in a harsh whisper. "It doesn't make sense at all, we aren't logical, and it's stupid to even think we could ever be any more functional than even Vic and Ted. So you like me, I like you, but it doesn't even matter. So could you drop it?"

"The point I'm trying to make is that you don't want me to drop it, Fred," she delivered the death blow. "And we both know that, and we'd both be stupid to deny it, especially now when-" she interrupted herself with a sharp intake of breath.

Fred wasn't so squeamish. The worst had passed. It was all downhill from then. "When we could all die and none of us wants to go out without having known love?" He finished her sentence with the eloquence of a man drunk on pain and misfortune. All the words were true, and they all cut deep into the marrow of each bone. They even cut him, because it hurt so much to think of possibility when it could so easily be snuffed out.

"What are you thinking about?" Kyrie finally asked.

"I'm not entirely sure," Fred answered honestly. "But I think it might involve something about kissing you here with our friends right beside us in the dark. What do you think of that?" He wriggled a few inches closer.

"Please, don't," Kyrie pleaded in a whisper. "I'd probably vomit or something." Ted began to snore in his soft way, his arms still linked with Victiore and Kyrie. The four of them were like a human dream catcher. Sweet dreams...dreams of a Hogwarts feast and a sunny day by the lake...

Fred wasn't the blushing sort, but his ears felt disturbingly warm. "I wasn't actually going to or anything, Kyrie-"

"Just promise me something, Fred." Kyrie demanded. "When we get out of this, you will get these heroic logical delusions out of your head and you'll act like a real person."

"I promise," Fred said without thinking at all. He was already on his way.

"Good," Kyrie mumbled, and she turned over to sleep. "I would hate to think that I've fallen in love with a robot."

"What's a robot?" Fred asked, but she was already asleep, and he didn't have the heart to wake her.


	5. WHATEVERRR

_Hey. You. Yeah, you. Don't you dare review._

Chapter Five: WHATEVERRR

Sometimes Fred was so talented at missing the big picture, he screwed up. Sometimes Vic was so focused on some underwhelming slight that she forgot the compliment. Sometimes Kyrie listened a little too much and talked a lot too little. Sometimes Teddy didn't talk at all.

But none of these minor character flaws had led anyone to believe these four teenagers would be rotated through revival-Death-Eater basements. And none of them had lived through the era of their parents, where something awful happening was more probable than not. Hell, Teddy's godfather didn't get one school year at Hogwarts without some kind of peril. Yet, the worst thing to happen to any of them was the death of parents they didn't even remember.

Maybe that's why the shock took so long to hit. It didn't hit all four at once- how could it? But Kyrie was the first.

She was awake far before the others. Or maybe she hadn't fallen asleep. She just knew this was the third basement in as many days, she was tired, aggravated, and hungry, and she could feel the tan she'd gotten over Christmas Break in a Muggle Dominican Republic tourist trap and carefully maintained ever since slipping out of her skin like sweat. Fred was snoring next to her like a donkey (heeeeee- inhale- haaaaaw- exhale...), Teddy and Vic were doing that disgustingly adorable thing again where they fell asleep a few inches, maybe a foot, apart, only to gravitate towards each other throughout the night. There was some kind of foot-stomping ritual (she would say a party but that was impossible, right?) above her head, but she was alone in this damp little island of hell. (She was also feeling rather dramatic.)

She was thinking about her dad. And how excited he'd been that his little girl had gotten into a wizarding school- that's what he called it. A wizarding school. His barely-eleven pig-tailed and mismatched girl who didn't have a mother and didn't want one, who got in trouble at school too much for being bored right out of her mind and never seemed to mean the multitude of apologies she was forced to recite. He had jumped at the chance immediately- she wasn't bad! She was different.

Over summers they'd gone picnicking, hiking, hitchhiking, once, but normally just biking. They'd bike around their quaint Muggle town, laughing and enjoying the sun.

But maybe not anymore.

Maybe he didn't even know. Probably, he didn't even know. Why would- HOW would any of the witches or wizards absorbed with the task of finding the four young adults tell him? They wouldn't even think about it. 'Oh, one of these kids has a muggle parent... Maybe they ought to be alerted.'

Hopefully he hadn't sent a letter. Hopefully he wasn't worrying. Hopefully he wouldn't have to.

Kyrie bumped her head against the wall in frustration. Tired with this hope business, she decided to just not care. If they died, fine. If they lived, fine. Unfortunately, decisions of this nature are always easier said than followed through, because Kyrie cared. She cared a lot, about a lot of things-especially boys with red hair and freckles who were named Fred. At that very moment, she was running her hands through his ratty orange mop, not caring if she woke him up because she felt so alone. Oh, Fred Weasley, he just ruined all of her plans.

She wanted Fred to meet her father. Someday, if they got out of this mess, she wanted to drag him halfway across the UK to the little house in Wales where she grew up, and she would present this handsome clod to her dad. "Look! Look, what I found wandering through the streets one day!" She'd say triumphantly. "He has eyes and ears and ten fingers and toes! He is capable of speech, has no life-threatening mental disorders, and can also be considerate at times! And I found him, Dad, and he didn't run away! He actually sort of loves me!"

Then Mr. Orlowe would nod in his thoughtful way and say something along the lines of, "I knew you could do it, Kyrie." After that, everything would be wonderful and she would never ever ever ever have to eat turnips again.

At least, that's what Kyrie planned in her head. What went on inside of her mind didn't usually conform with reality.

Example:

In her mind, she imagined having a semi-livable day with her three friends: waiting for them to wake up, eating whatever was thrown at them, talking about absolutely anything, maybe ragging on the incompetent Death Eaters for a while.

In reality, what Kyrie got was a wand jammed into the side her head as The Flop (Vic's name for Winthrop) covered her mouth with his uncomfortably warm hand.

"Stand up," he commanded softly in her ear. "Nice and easy, there we go...and no shouting Kyrie my dear. We wouldn't want to wake the others." Before she could even consider slamming her knee into his groin, The Flop had steered her across the room, where two other Death Eathers guarded the only exit. He kicked open the door and Kyrie was momentarily blinded by the absolute brightness of the hallway. She caught a glimpse of the red wall before darkness descended once more. A black bag, the sort that men wore as they were hanged, slipped over her head, making it impossible to see and almost as impossible to breathe. After a moment's pause as The Flop tied her wrists together in one deft motion, they were off again, marching to God knows where with her feet slipping out from under her at every turn.

Then, the sound of a heavy door opening echoed down the hallway, and the murmur of many voices came to Kyrie's ears. Oh, God, she thought. It this the end? They must have realized her half-blood status. She was going to die. Poor Vic, poor Ted, and she didn't even want to think about Fred, but there she was...thinking about him. Fight or flight took over, and the extra adrenaline in her blood made her fingers twitch uselessly. All the while, each footstep brought her closer to her fate.

Kyrie knew when she reached the end of her journey, because the hard floor of the hall morphed to carpet and the murmuring voices cut off with surprising immediacy. Someone, The Flop maybe, took hold of her shoulders and shoved her to her knees, but the plush carpet softened her fall. She knew what would happen next: the bag would come off and she would have only a split second to see the last thing she would ever see, the tip of a wand; or maybe they would make it a long, drawn out process, with the Cruciatus Curse so she could suffer properly. Maybe it a would a be a more ritualistic killing, in honor of the late Dark Lord. She didn't know how it would happen, but Kyrie fully expected to die in that room.

So of course she didn't expect what actually happened. The black bag whipped off her head, and she was momentarily stunned by the light gleaming from a single crystal chandelier, too busy squinting to realize that she was still alive. In fact, it took her several seconds to notice the absence of a wand in her face and the presence of at least twenty people, all clad in black, and all staring at her.

Standing a meter or so in front of her was The Flop, black bag in hand, with the stance of a matador. He faced away from her, appealing to the crowd of senior Death Eaters, hands curled into fists. He's nervous, Kyrie thought. But why? Afraid to move or speak, she could only watch as Winthrop The Flop pointed back to her and said-

"This is her. This is the one I want to keep, after we trade for Potter."

His words encouraged a few shocked whispers, but it seemed the majority of the room had already realized something like this was going on. Kyrie, of course, was not one of them, and felt the most shock of all, kneeling alone in a plush, rich room surrounded by men that had probably taken some kind of oath to kill people like her. Crazy world, isn't it?

"Why do you think she is.. worthy?" The leader strung words together haphazardly, not quite sure what he wanted to ask or how to ask it.

"I have had various conversations with her throughout the past days..."

His words droned on, but Kyrie spaced out. How could she listen to his drivel when she couldn't even process the original request?

One thousand, three hundred and forty-three seconds later (Kyrie couldn't focus her eyes or her ears, but she could count the tics of the clock in the hallway), she snapped out of it. "Understood," the Flop said with a morbidly funny bow. He turned to her with the most terrifying grin Kyrie had ever seen on a face, and then, once again, she took a Stunning spell to the face.

Apparently his chivalry had worn off since her capture.

Victoire Weasley always prided herself in her ability to understand men, but at that moment her cousin Fred was completely incoherent, in every sense of the word. They'd only been awake for six minutes or so, but those six minutes were fraught with peril as the red head paced viciously and threatened to throatpunch anything that moved.

This actually really amused Vic, because she kept imagining Fred literally punching with his throat. She attempted to relay her amusement to her cousin, but there was just no getting through to him. Kyrie had disappeared, and Fred was in mama bear mode. All she and Teddy could do was sit in the corner and try not to get in the way as mama bear blew off some steam.

"It's best if he just gets this out of his system now," Teddy whispered against her cheek. "It's no good building it all up and letting it out on Winthrop when he comes with the turnips. I'm assuming Winthrop's the one behind all of this anyway, so it would only exacerbate the issue."

Vic played with Ted's spidery fingers, and nodded in agreement. "You speak as though you know from experience, Teddy."

Ted shrugged, his hair a content reddish color. It was awful to think this way, but Victoire rather liked that her very presence could keep him calm in the middle of a crisis. "I've been mad over a girl before, Vic. You of all people should know that." The pair snickered at this, thinking back on their extremely rocky relationship and glad that something good had come out of their ordeal. Being forced to live together in a small space had certainly mellowed them both out, but it was a mellow Fred Weasley failed to possess.

"What are you two whispering about over there?" he snapped from the other side of the room. Finally, the boy stopped pacing and turned to face them. Fred, who wasn't a particularly fidgety person, had been moving nonstop since he first sounded the Kyrie-Is-Gone Alarm. (This was accomplished by kicking a wall that might have been near the door repeatedly.)

Feeling rather impish, Vic replied, "We're talking about how cute your butt is. Ted over here really likes it when you walk. Could you maybe start pacing again?" She barely managed to dodge Fred's shoe as it came hurtling into their corner. Ted, always the owner of bad luck, was actually assaulted twice by the footwear: once when it was thrown, and again when it bounced off the wall.

This sent Vic into a fit of laughter that made her wonder if she had lost her sanity. In comparison, Vic's laughter sent Fred into a fit of rage, and he was about to show both of the lovebirds what a throatpunch really was, when the door opened, and Kyrie Orlowe came back into their lives. Through hysterical tears, Vic watched the mama bear morph into the lover bear as Fred Weasley took Kyrie into his arms and crushed her in an obscenely passionate kiss.

"Ig- Whab alll goo dune?" Kyrie asked into the obscenely passionate kiss. Vic couldn't help but think a girl that didn't melt into a kiss like that didn't deserve it in the first place.

"I'm sorry, I think something was over your mouth. Maybe you should e-nun-ci-ate more clearly," Fred said after pulling away with a smug grin. His hands, Vic noticed, remained conveniently planted on her hips.

"I saiiid," Kyrie said, clearly annoyed and not at all near swooning like she should have been. "I didn't know we were the type of friends that randomly decided to kiss each other. I kinda have a half-blood boyfriend, remeeeember?"

"Kyrie," Fred huffed, sliding his hands up to her shoulders and holding her at arm's length. "You and I both know we just made that up for the Flop. I'm trying to be mind-numbingly sensual here and you are just ruining it all."

"Wha-... The Flop...?" Kyrie never looked so dumb, Vic thought, and her anger at Ted's best friend only doubled when said Teddy stood up, brushing off his pants and walking over.

"Did you get hit very hard, Kyr? If I had my wand I'd shine it in your eyes, 'cause you're acting very concussed," Teddy said, taking a shoulder from Fred and peering through the dark at Kyrie's shadowed eyes.

"Yeah, yeah. That must be it, Teddy. Winthrop banged my head real hard against the wall a few times." She winced and shook her head a few times to the side, as if she had a large amount of water lodged in her ear. Vic thought this was very strange, but she was a Muggleborn, and even though she didn't normally appear this strange, maybe there was some basic genetic difference in Muggles that had them short in high pressure situations? Vic just wanted her Teddy back. The floor was always less comfortable away from the Metamorphagus.


	6. The Squeakquel

Chapter Six: The Squeakquel

Three days later and Kyrie was still in a funk. Of course, that could be attributed to the fact that Winnie the Insatiable took her out of the room at least once a day. She refused to say what happened on her little trips, but everyone knew the gist of it, and it was tearing Fred to bits. When she was taken, he'd sort of shrink into himself and not talk to anyone. It was worse than the mama bear spiel, Ted thought, this pathetic dying of blood loss bear, and like Kyrie, Fred refused to talk about it.

"How're you feeling buddy?" Teddy tried on the third morning of this routine. "Want to talk?" Ted wasn't one for feelings, but dammit this was serious. Something bad was brewing just under the Weasley's skin.

Fred, curled up like a salted slug with closed eyes, had only a sentence or two-just enough to appease both Ted and Victoire in thier constant worry.

"She doesn't have to put up with this, y'know. I could easily kill him, if she would just let me..."

"Wait," Ted backpedaled. "You told her that you wanted to kill him?"

"Well, duh. What else would I do?" And that was the end of that conversation.

Ted didn't want to be smug or anything, but out of the trio, he knew Kyrie Orlowe the best. True, he'd never kissed her, but he knew the deep down Kyrie; what she would stand for and what she would not, and she was not a fan of voilent displays of testosterone. No wonder things were a bit shaky for her and Fred. The guy would have been better off saying he wanted to have a dance-off with the Flop.

Yet, as the days passed, Ted began to question his knowledge of Kyrie. She had changed, it seemed, and this new traumatized version had a cold front harsh enough to bring a frost to the room, a frost not even flaming red hair could warm. Vic noticed it too, and Ted certainly saw it. He worried that the four of them were falling apart with this new developement, and they wouldn't be able to survive the next basement of the next house. The events of the fourth morning certainly didn't help the situation.

As was the new routine, Kyrie wasn't around when they awoke, but showed up after about fifteen minutes of restless silence, bringing with her the morning turnips, or whatever it happened to be. Ted never got to the breakfast part because the first words out of Kyrie's mouth were, "I wish Harry would hurry up and save us. I'm getting tired of sitting in the dark."

These two sentences were completely uncharacteristic of Kyrie, because for starters she never ever ever complained. Ted used to joke that Kyrie would only go to Mungo's if she was missing a limb. Always quick to exaggerate the injuries of another, but never quick to mention that her neck was sore or that she had a headache, Kyrie looked to Ted like a dog walking around on two legs when she complained. Another thing...the four of them had decided long ago that their lives were dispensable compared to Harry Potter's. They were just kids, with no children of their own and no important jobs. Meanwhile, Harry had Albus and Lily and James, and he was the symbol of the free wizarding world. Their deaths would be a front page sob story. His death would be absolute pandemonium. Thirdly, which without either of the other two, Teddy would've let slip without even noticing it, Kyrie tended to call people annoying nicknames. Harry hated the nickname "Uncle Potty," and Kyrie used it to her advantage, and to cheer up her friends.

"What," Teddy said. Teddy, who had been the prime supporter of Kyrie's strangeness. Her only supporter through thick and thin. Fred even sometimes got irritated with her complete apathy towards anything she might have even used to care about. But Teddy knew Kyrie had to be down there. They just had to wait until she broke through the rapids and took a deep breath of the fresh air. Then the old Kyrie would be back without a doubt.

Fred sometimes sided with Vic. Vic always sided on her side. Tough love, she advocated. Tell Kyrie to break the fuck out of it or go kill herself already. Fred generally did not support the latter part, but the former was usually pretty agreeable.

But Kyrie herself might have just swung her only ally to the enemy. That was the number one wrong thing to say. The number one thing Kyrie would have never, ever said before the disappearance.

Speaking of, she always had dodged their questions about the first day of her change with the finesse of a world class politician. 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman.' Or, in Kyrie's case, 'that piece of slime that a week ago was unworthy to cling to the pieces of gum that stick to the bottom of my trainers.'

"Oh, come on. He's the Boy Who Lived. He is going to come for us no matter what." Kyrie tossed a bit of turnip into her mouth. She hadn't tossed a turnip at Fred in ages.

"He's smarter now. He has to know it's useless," Teddy argued, dropping his own turnip.

"If his hero complex was tangible, it would suffocate the whole country," Kyrie stated, rolling her eyes. "I am sick of turnips, tired of the dark, and disgusted by the accumulation of sweat and other smells. Just get us out of here."

"Why don't you ask Sir Flops a Lot?" Vic asked, nudging a turnip around her edge of the burlap sack. "I'm sure he'd oblige."

Fred shot her a look that probably should have fried at least part of her hair. Kyrie barely acknowledged the comment.

"More like he'd sock me in the face," she grumbled. Fred was so absorbed with trying to singe Victoire that he didn't hear, but Teddy sure did.

"Why do you go with him then?" Teddy asked in a whisper, inching away from Victoire and whispering in Kyrie's ear. Kyrie shrugged and scoffed, the corners of her mouth turned down. The loop of her lips rested slightly south west of her nose.

"I think I'd die otherwise." Her words had a fourth dimension completely incomprehensible, but it was enough to calm Teddy's earlier anger... For now. If Kyrie's life was in danger, and she was trading for it... It would obviously make her more likely to complain and... Be completely against everything she really was?

There was something else, and Teddy owed it to his friend to find it out.

"What's your favorite color, Fred?" Teddy asked, resting a turnip on his stomach. Now that Kyrie was fraternizing with the enemy, they did tend to get quite a bit more food. Teddy felt a bit sick thinking about it that way, though.

This was the new prison. An actual prison. Apparently the Death Eaters deigned to lower themselves in order to camouflage operations (verbatim from Kyrie who said it was verbatim from Thropy's daddy). The wizards had decided that, with their pureblood motto, no wizards would ever believe they'd hide in a Muggle penitentiary. Also, the prisoners were wasting away after not seeing wandlight in so long.

A pro for the prisoners, though, was that not all of the Muggle electricity had been turned off. There were little things some of the Death Eaters (Kyrie refused to answer any questions about Muggle things, in case it would give her away to the Death Eaters) called batheries or batteries. The first sounded remarkably clean and the second sounded incredibly violent. Muggles. They apparently could still malfunction with magic, and the wizards weren't refined enough in Muggle technology to know how badly they could malfunction.

Also, the floors creaked. Every morning when Kyrie was taken away, they knew. They pretended to sleep through it, but they each timed each visit. Apparently, Winthrop was a quickie kind of guy, since it only took ten to fifteen minutes each time. Sometimes much shorter.

''Red," the boy replied without a hint of irony.

The four teenagers were laying with their heads together in a square on their backs. Fred's mop of hair was across from Kyrie's mess, and Victoire's problem-free hair lay gracefully between them on one side, while Teddy's quickly changing head of hair metamorphed on the other. Their second bag of turnips of the day had been hurled at them about ten minutes ago, but the flickering lights of the two-person cell they had been stuck into didn't reveal a thing more than the basement had.

"Really?" Kyrie asked, her voice leaving it's crispy monotone in surprise. It perked in interest, which did interest Fred.

"Yes, why does that surprise you?" Fred asked, tilting his head backwards to look at the top of Kyrie's hair. She didn't do the same.

"Well, you're a Weasley. You're stuck with that hair. You aren't sick of it?" Her hands clasped over her stomach even as her tone returned to its icy indifference.

"I'm a Weasley, yes. But I'm not sick of it. Weasleys are brave, Gryffindor through and through."

"I'm not sure how red hair relates to bravery at all, Fred," she countered. "I mean, I've got this plain old brown hair, and I was in Gryffindor. Harry's is black, and Teddy...well-"

Fred interrupted her ramblings with a sleepy murmur. "Could you...could you just do one thing for me Kyrie darling?"

Ted watched Kyrie flinch at the pet name, her hands moving up to hug herself around the shoulders. "It depends on what that one thing is," she said. "I'm not going to hop on one foot and play the trumpet if that's what you want." Teddy smiled at this, a small hint of her old personality.

"Oh no, it's simple really," Fred promised. "I was just wondering if maybe you'd shut up and go to sleep for a while. You're giving me a headache."

With that...the room fell silent. Despite Fred's claim to fatigue, even he stayed awake. The four teens laid awake in silence, just thinking. Teddy thought about his Godfather, how he could be handling this sudden re-emergence of his old foe. Then his slow thoughts meandered to Fred and Kyrie. How were they going to help the small relationship they had finally got around to getting into live, when she couldn't even handle him calling her a nickname? They hadn't kissed since the ravaging Fred embarked on as soon as she came back. And they always slept on opposite sides of the room. Something really must be done...


	7. Everything Was a Lie

Happy/Merry Christmas/have a great day, depending on location/religion.

Chapter Seven: Everything (well, most things) Was a Lie

Kyrie woke up on a ratty old comforter, decorated with sheep and giraffes. Strange, but kind of quirky. She could see Fred having a comforter like that in his room at home. His dorm tended to eat comforters, actually, Kyrie stole them, so he gave up on them ages ago.

She stretched her right leg, sliding her left leg up the comfortable comforter. Kyrie blinked and decided to use the mass of shadows usually defined as a ceiling like a sky filled with clouds. That shadow was Teddy's hair after a Quidditch match (yellow and all over the place), that mass was Fred's left elbow (the right one was far pointier), and that one was the turnip she-

Turnips. She should not be in a comfy King-sized bed. She should be aching all over from sleeping on a cold hard floor, but not caring about it because Fred Weasley was just about the best invention since the Polyjuice Pill. She shot up, staring around the room. Someone would probably be beat if she was found so comfortable, and she determined it would not be her.

Her still-bare feet slid off of the comforter and onto the shag carpet, her toes instinctively curling into the material. She stepped towards the door, glad this room was better lit at its darkest than the basement was at its lightest. Another step. Just three more, and then she'd have to do some reconnaissance.

But the door opened. She should have known.

"Hey, Kyrie. Can I call you 'Rie?" The Flop. The world-ending, jerkfaced, idiotic asshole the Flop.

"No," she croaked.

"Come on, come on, come on. Back in bed." A grin. Not Fred's lovely, if foreboding, grin, not Teddy's funny, nice grin, and not even Victoire's occasional seductive grin. This grin was irredeemable.

"I'd rather not," Kyrie said, floundering for a reason that wouldn't get her Stunned again. "I'm, uh, I'm terrified of sheep. It's a childhood issue, yeah?"

He crinkled his eyebrows together with a smile. "You're adorable." She clenched her jaw, but smiled. "Come on, I'll take off the comforter. You probably think it's too warm for a comforter anyway." He shrugged and moseyed over to the bed, yanking off the comforter and throwing it into a closet she hadn't noticed before. He fell backwards onto the bed, crossing his legs as he fell. He laid the wrong way across the bed, parallel with the headboard, but motioned Kyrie over nonetheless. She edged towards him, unsure she could escape with him in the room, but wanting to try anyway.

"Come on!" Winnie crooned. "I'm not gonna hurt you. I don't hurt pretty girls," but his tone said 'I might make a change for you, if you don't get over here now.' Heeding this subliminal advice, Kyrie sat gingerly on the bed, at least a meter away from him, her spine a metal rod. She chanced a swift glance in the Flop's direction, and his face was the picture of dissatisfaction.

Head rested lazily in his right palm, he beckoned with a finger. "Closer," he deadpanned. Obedient and only slightly disgusted, Kyrie scrambled closer, but refused to look at her captor. Instead, she picked at her fingernails, wishing she could say something to put him off, confuse him or make him hate her. She did not like the feeling his sharky blue eyes gave her when they met with her own.

The Flop shifted in her peripheral and then there was his hand, hovering only centimeters away from her face. Too-hot fingertips traced from her temple to her jaw, and stayed there for an immeasureable amount of time. Kyrie reisited the urge to sneer or pull away, because that's exactly what the Flop wanted: a reason to be angry with her. Well, she wouldn't give him what he wanted. Kill him with compliance, she told herself. That'll ruffle his feathers. She wanted dearly to wipe the soppy smirk right off his face, but no. Control yourself, Kyrie.

The torture ended with a dull stinging in her scalp that startled Kyrie. "Ow!" she grumbled, rubbing the spot where the Flop had torn out three of her hairs. "What was that for?"

"Nothing," he replied innocently, examining the wavy strands he had harvested, "that you need to be concerned about." Then as suddenly as he had appeared, Winnie the Flop sat up and fished a vial from his pocket, placing the hairs inside and pushing the stopper in tightly. "I really should be going Kyrie darling, but first there's someone I'd like you to meet."

In the back of her mind, Kyrie registered Fred's pet name for her, deciding it surely had to be an awful coincidence. It was impossible that the Flop could be so completely tactless, but then again, maybe it wasn't...they did call him the Flop after all.

A figure slipped through the door and shook hands with Winthrop, but it was impossible to discern anything of their appearance given that they were decked out in full Death Eater garb. "I need to make this quick," the voice was unmistakably male. "They'll be missing her soon, so just the basics for today. That should suffice until the next session."

Kyrie absolutely hated the fact that they were talking about her as though she wasn't in the room, but was delighted that she would soon be returning to her companions, or at least that's what it sounded like. Until the cloaked figure spoke again. "She needs to change out of those clothes as well. We can't risk any suspicion."

Oh, God...what were they doing? Kyrie stood abruptly, not sure what she planned to do, but thankfully didn't have to think that far. At that moment a freight train plowed though her forehead, straight into the memories of her childhood. A Legilimens! Kyrie tried to throw up some defenses, but the man was already inside. She was never good at Occlumency anyway. She could only fall back onto the bed and stare at the eyes appearing behind the slits in the man's mask. He was well-practiced, shuffling through unecessary memories of the drudgery of school and the exhilaration of Quidditch to find her somber but intelligent father, her lack of a mother, all the simple details that are memorized thoughout the years. And then, it was over... Her mind belonged to her once more, and she instinctively curled up into a little ball on the bed. Her limbs quivered with a violated energy that she couldn't suppress, and tears slipped quietly from her eyes.

By some miracle, her half-blood status had hovered under his radar as he perused her mind, but she knew that wouldn't last for long, not if they continued these "sessions." She ached with worry.

"You'll be fine," the Flop practically comanded as he tossed some robes onto the bed beside her. "Now hurry up and change. We're running on a tight schedule here."

Kyrie took the new robes into her hands and relished the sterile smell of them. They felt so soft and clean in her hands, especially compared to the sweat and grime coated tatters she had worn to a night out days ago. But she would rather rot in the clothes they captured her in than change into these new, traitorous threads.

The Flop pressed his wand into the side of her neck, not hard, but just enough to make its presence known. "Get on with it, Kyrie darling. You don't have any parts I haven't seen before."

By then the parts had fallen together in Kyrie's mind. The man needing to know her and have her clothes. The hair ripped from her head and put into a vial. Some Kyrie that was not Kyrie going back to her friends...

"Oh please," she scoffed. "I'm not five. But if you think I'm going to help some bastard impersonate me, you've got another thing coming. If you want me in different clothes, then you're going to have to knock me out and do it yourself!" So much for complying.

"As you wish," the Flop sighed, and with a wave of his wand, Kyrie Orlowe succumbed to sleep.

Things had gotten progressively better since the fourth day, and it seemed that Kyrie was relearning who she really was... Sometimes the creepy Death Eater would go further into a memory that sparked his interest, like her first meeting with Teddy Lupin himself. He actually decided to learn the numbered list of arguments between Victoire and Ted. He watched her memory of the night of their capture, as well as the first time she was kissed, and the moment in the Gryffindor Common Room, when she had just finished thoroughly crushing Fred Weasley at wizarding chess, that she decided, yes, she did think she loved this crazy redhead.

But the memories weren't what really showed her what she was. The Flop did. If she was a better person, she wouldn't let him sleep next to her just because he threatened her friends. A better person would not be enjoying pasta primavera and chicken cacciatore when her friends were eating turnips. A better person would be doing a much better job at escaping.

"I'm back!" Winthrop Jericho Hennenman the Third proclaimed, like he was some kind of sweetheart instead of some kind of slime. Kyrie barely raised her eyes to look at him. She was lying on the bed on her back, her chin shoved unattractively against the bottom of her neck. Even four days later, she was upset with her failure to keep her clothes. Afterward, the creepy look Win gave her made her wish a little that she could have swallowed her pride and disrobed herself. But in a room with so little pride to begin with, she was generally okay with her choice.

"I'll get the cake." She almost rolled her eyes but she couldn't summon the energy. She thrived on turnips with friends, but sunk a little with good food and bad company.

"Would you like cake?" he asked as he slid the sleeves of his robes down his arms.

"Nah." Kyrie surveyed the man, although he couldn't be more than twenty, through hooded eyes. Fred swore he was plain, maybe edging towards attractive, which of course provoked a questioning of Fred's sexuality, but Kyrie didn't see it. The man was just... a Death Eater.

He slid out of his slacks and threw his white shirt over his head before striding over to the bed to lay a few centimeters away from her. She didn't understand why he didn't wear a robe. Well, she did. He wanted to make her uncomfortable and angry or turned on. Either way, she would not lose.

"You're really pale," she observed, thinking about how absolutely tan Fred was in comparison. And he was a ginger.

She was still thinking of Fred's skinny white legs when knuckles slid into her cheek, smashing a bit of the inside of her cheek off of her teeth before Newton's law of actions and reactions spoke up. Her head slammed sideways, right into the light blue wall.

She asked, when she woke up after being spelled asleep and changed, why the bed had been shoved against the wall. Winthrop had just pointed out that it was very unlikely she would climb over his sleeping form without waking him up. So the door was invitingly unlocked at night. Torture.

She coughed and cleared her throat, along with making a bunch of incomprehensible consonant sounds, just trying to sort out in her mind what happened.

"Uh...what just happened?"

"I punched you in the face, I think." The Flop shrugged.

"Well, uhh...why did you do that, exactly?"

"Anger issues...whatever." He snuggled closer and smirked a winning smirk. Was he bipolar or what?

Kyrie knew of only one way to respond, and it was dangerous, but she found it difficult to keep her mouth shut when it was just so tempting. Fully aware of the grave she was digging for herself, Kyrie locked eyes with the Flop and said, "Winnie, love? Yeah, you hit like a girl."


	8. If Fred Knew

Chapter Eight: If Fred Knew He Was Kissing A Man He Would Castrate Himself

Five days after the disappearance, everything was just dandy for Fred Weasley. Nevermind that he was the prisoner of the newly reformed Death Eater club. Nevermind that his diet consisted of turnips and turnips and turnips. Nevermind that he hadn't bathed in weeks. None of it, not one single thing, mattered to him.

Because his Kyrie was back from whatever purgatory her mind had been suffering through, and to sweeten the deal, the Flop seemed to have lost interest in her as well. When Fred woke up in the morning, she was dozing softly across from him, arms flung out at odd angles to her body. For the first time in a while, she wasn't being completely offensive, and it made him want to kiss her.

So he did, a gentle peck on the forehead, because on the lips while she was sleeping would be creepy beyond compare. Still, the touch managed to wake her, eyes fluttering open and an actual smile on her lips when she registered who he was, and who she was; maybe she realized through the haze of Winthrop that he was the one she loved.

"Fred," she smiled. "Fred Weasley, brother of Roxanne, son of George and Angelina. Named after your father's dead twin. Where have you been all my life, Fred Weasley?"

A nervous chuckle bubbled from his lips. "Were they drugging you, Kyrie?" Impulsively, he tangled his hands in her hair, and she let him. She blinked at him, smiled some more. "Is that why you've been in such a funk?"

"I'll never tell," Kyrie teased. "Besides, you wouldn't believe me if I did." A spark lit up her eyes, one he didn't remember ever seeing before. But it was so close to the spark she had before that he didn't even care.

"Well, I guess I can accept that. As long as we, uh-" The suggestion he was about to make was cut off by her taking the suggestion a few minutes early. Her lips against his reminded him why he put up with her insanity.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," she whispered against his lips, smiling with one side of her mouth. Fred remembered Kyrie telling him just a week ago that a half smile was always bad.

"Never trust a half smile," she said with a full, every-tooth-exposed grin, "especially not one from me."

That made this moment a little strange.

"What are you sorry about?" he asked, trying to shake off the uneasyness. "That was great."

"No, silly bug!" She giggled, practically hysterically. "For my, as you so astuuutely put it, funk." She smiled up at him, her tongue peeking out of the right corner of her mouth. "It was awfully... naughty of me."

"Dear Godric. Get a rooooom," Teddy groaned, turning over and tossing his left arm over Victoire's throat. "Some of us are trying to get some extra sleep before the daily turnip pelting."

"If we could get a room, the turnip pelting wouldn't really be a problem, would it?" Kyrie asked with her characteristic nonchalance.

"I'm not sure if I want to be happy Kyrie's back or angry that she won't let me get any Godric damn sleep," Teddy groaned again, this time opening an eye enough to peek at the pair.

"Be angry," Victoire advised in a murmur. "At first I thought they were plunging a toilet, but then I realized they were just sucking face."

"Do we plunge toilets together? Is this some kind of couple-y activity I didn't know we were supposed to engage in?" Kyrie asked. Fred hoped the seemingly-genuine ignorance was actually just a really good act, a joke gone wrong. Because that would be beyond strange.

"Um," Fred sat up and wondered what on Earth he was supposed to say to that. "Yuuhhh-yes? Yes. We do. Plunge, toilets. Together. Right." He became incredibly interested in his shoelaces just then.

Victoire then burst into laughter and started slapping Ted on the shoulder. "Oh stop it, stop it! You'll make me pee myself!"

"What? What's going on?" Kyrie sat upright and peered across the room at the two.

Ted's hair literally blushed and he said, "Nothing, I didn't say anything. Shut up, Vic!" he struggled to clamp his hand over her mouth.

But Victoire was having none of that, she scrambled out of his grasp and choked on her own spit a few times. "The.." wheeze. "He called you the.." snort, wheeze. "Ahaha! The Sexually Active Plumber Society!"

"Oh, for heaven's sake..." Fred put his face in his hands and shook his head. He felt a hand rest on his shoulder, a comfortable weight, and knew it must have been Kyrie. Reflexively, he put a hand over hers and tapped a spastic rythm on her fingers with his thumb.

"I think the name's brilliant," she told Ted. "If that's any consolation."

"Chow time!" Through the bars of their prison, the Death Eater guard chucked the turnips. Nope, Teddy wasn't kidding. Sometimes Fred thought they aimed specifically for him, which wouldn't have been very surprising, considering he and Winnie were in competition for the same girl. The morning's events had him feeling confident though, and he didn't let go of Kyrie's hand through the pelting process, simply taking a smug bite from his first turnip of the day.

"How you doing princess?" the Death Eater asked Kyrie. "Comfortable in your little cell?"

"I am not a princess," Kyrie snarled. "And I would certainly rather be in here than out there with that sop Winthrop Jericho Hennenman the Third!" At that, she hefted a particularly lumpy turnip and beamed it at the man's groin. His knees buckled but he managed to hold the cell bars for support. Fred had to stuff his knuckles in his mouth so he didn't laugh until his diaphram imploded.

"You...ungrateful...little...scab!" the unlucky guy groaned. "I'll have your head for this!"

"You can go burn in Hell!" Kyrie suggested. "Or at least get out of my sight."

Grumbling, the man took off, heeding Kyrie's advice, but not before Victoire could shout to his retreating form.

"Don't you think Sir Winnie the Flop will be wanting that head of hers, or does he go for dead girls too? He did say he was pretty open-minded about such things!" She got no reply, but did receive three fist bumps from her friends.

"Wow, Victoire," Teddy gushed. "I knew you had it in you, but I never thought you'd let it out at such an appropriate time!"

"Ohh, don't compliment me," Vic said. "That was all Kyrie. You were a rockstar, I must say."

Fred looped his arm around Kyrie's shoulders. "My rockstar at that, which makes it even better." Then the two began plunging toilets.

"Eww," said Victoire. "And I thought we were supposed to be the touchy feely ones, while they thumb-wrestled."

Ted shrugged, offering his thumb. "Maybe we've switched roles, like a body swap or something."

The plunging was interrupted by a single snort from Kyrie. When a deliriously happy Fred asked about it, she offered no explanation. She merely returned her tongue to his mouth, and that was really all of the explanation the redhead needed.

"I'm actually going to eat a few of these turnips before they become even more suspiciously lumped or colored," Teddy commented, leaning against the bars of their prison and snatching a turnip from the floor. He bit into it with a suppressed grimace. "These don't get any better, do they?" he asked rhetorically, shrugging and leaning back into a more comfortable position, his legs splayed. His right leg intersected Victoire's left, and his left pointed towards Fred and his friend. Who was definitely not discouraging any of his questions about her. Sure, that last outburst at the guard fulfilled every single one of her traits ever. But did it over fill them?

Vic kicked at his leg, ending the intersection. At his questioning look, she merely scooted over to lean next to him. "We might as well share this turnip, since there's no chance of you taking me out to share a banana split any time soon."

And they kind of forgot about Kyrie and Fred's plunging in their own.

Kyrie walked down the hallway with her head down and her arms stationary at her sides. Apparently, her friends moved. So, whenever Winthrop the Idiot left to go and help torture them (she was pretty sure his help was unneeded, but greatly appreciated anyhow), she was allowed free reign of their old prison. She could descend to the basement whenever she wished, the turnipy smell never really went away, or walk around the lower level, but the doors and windows were all locked and boarded, so there really was no chance of her escape. Maybe if she had the strength of a hundred Quidditch players, or, hmm, maybe, a wand? But she didn't. Actually, she wondered what they were going to do with her wand. The impostor, who said he gleaned enough from her memory that Legilimens sessions could be knocked down to once a month (joy), wouldn't be compatible with it, and unless he had a remarkably similar wand type (doubtful, since she floundered at Occlumency and things like that but exceeded in things that mattered, like honesty) she liked to hope her friends would notice...

But maybe Fred was so caught up kissing the Fake Kyrie that he wouldn't notice. And Ted and Victoire couldn't be very far behind...

Well, that was unfair. Apparently captivity did not do wonders for her disposition at all. Surprise.

So she stalked through the peeling hallways and the torn wood floors. Her feet remained shoeless since the very first day of captivity, and her robe frustrated her still. It would be nice to have some Muggle clothes, but even mentioning Muggles around Winthrop made her nervous. What if he was an okay Legilimens? Even that could over-power her flimsy blocks.

But Kyrie could do nothing but hope. If her friends revealed her to the Fake Kyrie, of course she couldn't really blame them. They probably would, if they ever heard of it, which would be unlikely. If it got out that Winthrop's whore (Winthrop's friends loved the nickname, despite the little truth in it.) was only half pure... Well, these fanatics tended to see the glass as half-empty. So she would be gone, and Fake Kyrie would have the rest of his life to continue spying on those closest to the old Order. Maybe these revivalists hit gold. Or maybe the Order was just dealt a really bad hand this time around.

Uncle Potty still kicked his influence and knowledge around though, and he definitely had skills the Order needed. He hated the joke that he was the new Dumbledore. Yet every joke has its grain of truth.

Kyrie kicked a wall. She needed to quit thinking about all of these politics. She was seventeen. She needed to go out and get drunk and be irresponsible with herself. Not amble around in worn down buildings, waiting for her captor to come home so her Stockholm Syndrome could intensify even more. She rolled her eyes at herself and stomped down the hall. If she was going to whine like a child, she'd stay in her room like one. Not as if there was anything else to do anyway.

She threw herself onto the bed she allowed herself to share with the Flop. The Flop! Only Vic would come up with a nickname so obscure but suited. She snorted into the sheets unsmilingly, knowing when she missed Victoire of all people, she needed socialization.

She still laid face-down on the suspicious smelling quilt hours later when the Flop returned. "Here I am!" he said with aplomb, tossing his suit jacket onto a chair. "I'll let you know that Abel, your twin? Is doing marvelously. For a while he acted too grumpily, but now he's completely adapted to his job. I think the kissing a guy thing set him off a little at first." Kyrie wondered how long Flopsy would rant without her response. "Or maybe it was the female body hormones. I hear the Pill really freaks men out at first, when they turn into women. Their bodies start believing they can actually reproduce, only to find out they can't! What a phenomena, yeah?" Winthrop flopped onto the bed, leaning on his right side with his elbow on the bed and resting his face in his right hand. Kyrie started to realize this was his favorite pose.

"Yeah," She murmured, not looking up. Maybe it smelled like baby powder and sandalwood? No... Much stronger baby than powder.

He cleared his throat. "I think, uh, your friend Fred? The one you're cheating on your half blood boyfriend with? Or, were, actually." Kyrie nodded into the bed. Sure, whatever. "I think he likes Abel better than you. Abel's really much more compliant."

Kyrie wanted to show him compliant. Show him compliance going right down his throat.

"Kyrie, darling. This could be painless." Kyrie laid still, feeling like a child again. "Just give me what I want."

"Ha! Just give you what you want? Well...why didn't I think of that?" She rolled her eyes and turned away from him, hoping he didn't see her fingers trembling at the very thought of...eww. No, just no.

The bed springs protested as the Flop scooted closer. "I'm serious, Kyrie, and you're being a baby about this. Why can't you grow up and accept the fact that you have no other options? I mean, why am I even asking you? It's not like you could stop me or anything, and really once you let me you'd feel really relaxed and I just don't understand why you're so against this..."

What the hell was he babbling about? "Wait a second, wait a second." Kyrie sat up and steepled her fingers. "Are you talking about sex or acupuncture here Winnie? Because I'm not really sure what you're saying."

"Oh, um." The Death Eater tinged pink and mumbled something about a foot rub.

A foot rub...really? Things just kept getting stranger and stranger. Her boyfriend was making out with a man in his twenties, she was sleeping in a bed doused in some sort of mega baby powder, and now her Death Eater in shining armor wanted to give her a foot rub. What was the world coming to? Kyrie tried desperately not to laugh at him, but the Flop wasn't blind.

"What?" he grumbled defensively. "I just sort of like feet, y'know?"

Eww, no. This was not happening. Winthrop did not have a foot fetish. "I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with you touching my feet. You already took my shoes. Can't you have fun with those or something?"

"It's not the same!" he cried, but then realized he looked like a crazy person. Clearing his throat, he blinked the wild light from his eyes and pasted on his most serious, most appealing face. "You don't understand. It wouldn't be strange or anything like that. It's not like I have a foot obsession, and-"

"You took my shoes," Kyrie interrupted flatly.

"Yes, you've said that already, but-"

"You. Took. My. Shoes. Winthrop."

The Flop would not be fazed by her persistence, and continued to rationalize. "So I took your shoes. Maybe I wanted you to feel uncomfortable, or...something?"

In all of her life, Kyrie had never met a man so willing to give a woman a foot massage, and she knew she probably never would again. A part of her wanted to punch him in the face for being so damn creepy. Another part thought about the fact that her feet had been tromping through drippy basements for the past millenia, and probably carried enough diseases to jump-start a zombie apocalypse- even creepy Winnie didn't deserve such a fate. Then, there was that frazzled, devil-may-care part of her that wouldn't care if Winthrop made her feet his personal deity, because a foot rub was a foot rub, and Godric knew she needed something to take the stress away.

Suddenly, the Flop was all business. He pushed himself up on his elbows and stared with those sharky blue eyes. "I'll make a deal with you, Kyrie, an offer that you can't refuse." He paused for effect, lips parting slightly in a devilish smirk. "Would you like to hear it?"

Feeling reckless, Kyrie used both of her arms to push Winnie off the bed. He landed with a solid thump. "No, I would not like to hear it."

Instead of jumping up and shouting or stomping his foot, or doing something equally childish, the Flop remained where he was, eyes barely peeping above the edge of the mattress, waiting. That's when Kyrie knew, whatever he had in mind, it was a doozy. It would trump her greatest disinclination.

"Tell me," she said, unable to look away from the top half of his head. "What are you willing to trade?"

"One day," he said. "One day with your friends."

Kyrie didn't get it at first. Didn't get it at all. This man sitting at her feet, staring at them almost hungrily, offered her a small dose of the one thing that could give her back her spark or hope or something. And all he wanted to do was touch her feet.

Really, if she looked at it logically, she could say no. And worry about it the rest of her captured life. And probably give into the Flop eventually anyway. She already felt like sleeping for years, in a few weeks she would just be more miserable and downtrodden. But a day with her friends...

"How do I know you're not lying," Kyrie asked, scratching the bottom of her left foot with the big toe of her right foot. "Do I get to spend the day with my friends first, or do I have to let you massage my feet first? What day is it, tomorrow, or the second Friday of the seventh week of August?"

He smiled with his mouth closed, but Kyrie fancied she could see drool dripping out the side. He knew he'd won. He knew he would. He did hold all the cards after all.

"Tomorrow. And I think you'll agree, it's almost worth two foot rubs. In fact, giving you one now would probably ease out some tension. You haven't seen your friends in a while, what if they don't like your version of you anymore? One before and one after." That was so unfair. But pushing her luck was not something she was about to do, especially not when she could almost hear their voices. (Not really, though, that would be the final straw of sanity dropping off of the haystack of her brain.)

"Sure, uh, sure." She scooted back in the bed, unsure herself how these things worked. Winthrop regained his seat on the bed and, once Kyrie made herself comfortable against the headboard, grabbed a foot and went to work.

Kyrie knew deep down that foot massages were not supposed to take this long, but she couldn't bring herself to care. The glorious feeling of muscles that had tensed for weeks added to the relief that she would get to see her friends again left her feeling on top of the world. In fact, once Winthrop stopped, Kyrie thought about protesting, but she was practically melted on the headboard. Winthrop sighed, sounding as contented as Kyrie felt, and flopped over to lay parallel to her.

"You have really high arches," he murmured before drifting off to sleep. Kyrie almost felt offended before she drifted off after him.

Fingers running up her bare leg woke her up. Her eyes fluttered open and were greeted with Winthrop centimeteres away.

"What are you doing?" she grumbled, slashing at her eyes with two fingers. "I feel like I got three hours of sleep."

Winthrop glanced at his watch. "You did. Get up, we have to prepare a story for your friends." He tugged at her foot with a grin, an almost friendly one. Bad sign.

"A... Story?" she asked.

"Yes, slow one. Come on, hurry up." He practically placed her in a wicker chair by the door. He paced in front of her. "Abel made a guard very angry yesterday, pretending to be you very well and pelting him with a turnip in a very unfortunate, very male place." A significant look ensured Kyrie knew exactly which male significant organ had been harmed. "So, he is currently being removed very violently from the cell to ensure you have a very good reason to come back to them like you are now. Switching clothes is obviously a task for you, so you'll return in that robe.

"Now, there is one lastttt touch," Winthrop said, halting right in front of her chair. He stared at her like she was a painting of his that needed one last brush stroke, tilting his head and squinting. And then his fist scraped against her nose, making a crunch and resulting in a bloody waterfall. He swished his wand and muttered something. Kyrie's downpour of blood stopped, but she noticed he took great pains to leave the stains on her robe. He should've been an actor or something.

"Can I go now?" she asked, almost snorting at the nasal tone of her voice.

"We can go now, darling. And if you say one word to them about Abel being an impostor, Fred Weasley will die." The threat didn't sound like a bluff at all, and even if it did, it was not a bluff Kyrie was ready to call. He grabbed her left forearm and stomped through the bedroom and front doors, waiting until they were deeply entrenched in a nearby woods to Apparate. Into another copse of trees. They trekked another few meters before entering a white and blue doorway.

Winthrop tore his wand out of his robe. His large dirty hands clamped over her eyes as he swirled his wand. She could hear the air hissing around the wood and the occasional tap against the door, but other than that she heard no incantations. Before she knew it she was herded into the house, her eyes still covered, and eventually her head was squeezed between two bars. What the hell?

"Bitch," Winthrop hissed. "Because of your obvious behavioral problems, I guess I'll have to retrieve you tonight, to teach you some proper manners." She opened her eyes as something slid open, but she couldn't comprehend everything quickly enough to catch herself as she was shoved through the newly opened prison door and onto the floor.

"Fuck," she mumbled, wiping her forehead with one hand and propping herself up on the other.

"Kyrie!" Fred exclaimed, glancing at her face. "What the hell did he do to you? I'll-"

"Sit next to me and play bloody knuckles until I feel better?" Kyrie suggested with a half-hearted grin. Fred returned it before settling next to her.

"We haven't played this in days," Fred mumbled, shoving his knuckles towards hers to be bloodied. He always lost.

"Maybe I haven't been myself," Kyrie hinted, but she was only greeted with a smile. She'd probably be punished for that later, but all she could think about was now. Just as Fred revved up for another round, she threw her arms around his throat and tackled him to the ground. "Oh dear Godric I've missed you so much," she whispered into his shoulder, squeezing him tightly.

He returned the embrace with unbounded enthusiam, nuzzling the top of her head-she could feel his smile through her hair. "I was starting to worry about you there, CoPlunger. The Flop has never kept you away from us for so long."

CoPlunger? Kyrie took a moment to wonder what the hell he was talking about, and then realized she probably needed to respond or something so as not to make the others suspicious. "Yeah, well...Winflop had to give me a good talking to. Apparently Death Eaters don't like getting hit in the family jewels; they can't make little baby Death Eaters that way."

"Oh, don't be silly, Kyrie," Vic admonished playfully. "Death Eaters cannot procreate: they're not human enough to have desires like normal people." (Kyrie begged to differ- Winthrop was hornier than than a rhino.) "They get off on killing Mudbloods and such."

"And if they did reproduce," Ted added. "I am sure they would strangle their unwanted children as soon as they left the womb." He added helpful sound effects and gestures that shouldn't have been funny, but sent the four of them into near-hysterics.

All the while, Kyrie never left Fred's arms, and she pressed her ear to his chest as he laughed, listening. His laughter sounded like the barking of a dog, and good heavens his arms were hairy enough to belong to a dog. She rolled off of him and propped herself up on her elbows, squinting at his forearms through the dim light. She definitely did not miss the inability to see. No, she had missed this boy with the body hair of a Yeti, those short, wiry ginger sprouts thatching together like the roots of a rainforest. Surely Fred had not always been so, er...well-insulated.

"Something wrong Kyrie?" Fred queried.

Winnie's pale and inoffensive arms were virtually hairless, and so smooth that- No. Kyrie refused to dignify that thought by completing it. Instead her mind jumped to self-defense reflexes as Fred tackled her and attempted to remove her tonsils with his tongue. After a second or two of wrestling and some put-off grumbling from both Teddy and Victoire, she managed to pry her lips from his and say- rather coherently she thought for having just KISSED Fred Weasley- "What? Why did you do that?" Looking back, she saw that these were more or less the exact wrong words to say in that situation.

Fred wasn't fazed in the least. "You looked so beautiful with your confused face. I had to kiss you." He moved to try it again, but she stopped it with a motion of her hand.

"Please," she said. "I just got punched in the face, and my ears are still ringing. Let me meditate first or something." The Flop had bragged time and again that his spy had infiltrated Fred's oral cavity, but it wasn't real until that moment when she realized she was swapping saliva with her clone, and not just any clone but a man-clone. Kyrie needed some time to reconcile herself with this fact, otherwise she would feel incredibly cheap, and unsanitary.

After thinking uninterrupted for ten minutes (which had to be so out of character her three friends might start to think she was the impostor instead of the real impostor being suspected), she had it all figured out. She only got to see Fred one more time for what would probably be a very long time. So what, if he was unknowingly cheating on her- no, he wasn't even really doing that. They never said, "Hey, you want to be exclusive?" They just said, "Hey, let's kiss a lot!" So, he wasn't even really cheating. He just happened to kiss this guy who looked like her a lot... And that wasn't helping at all.

So, once the kissing got interrupted with the thinking and the thinking got interrupted by the realization that it wasn't helping at all, Kyrie decided to talk to her best friend.

"Teddy, buddy, I need to talk to you about this thing that just happened and I need to talk to you alone. Sooo, cousins, talk about... Weird uncles. Or something." She pulled Teddy to the far corner of the bars.

"What is it? Did the plumbing comment offend you? I know you were playing dumb, but I really just wanted to make Vic think I was clever-"

"Chill, Ted," Kyrie interrupted, running her hand through her hair. "You talk a hell of a lot more than I remembered," she muttered, shaking her head. "I wanted... Do you think... Let's say someone was technically cheating on someone else but the person cheating didn't know that they were. Is this okay."

Teddy let out a breath. "Kyrie. This would never happen. Can I just get back to making fun of you and Fred with Victoire?"

"Teddy, this is really important to me," Kyrie grumbled, hating that she couldn't figure something out for herself. "I mean. I never rushed back to crush someone at wizard's chess just because you had some stupid question about whether your hair was lime green enough for Victoire."

Teddy flinched. "That was a valid question and it was once."

"Whatever! Tell me," Kyrie demanded, grabbing his left shoulder and shaking it a little. "Or I will shake you into a jelly mess. I wonder if these Death Eaters are good at brewing Skele-Gro."

"Fine, fine. Let me think, you demon that has replaced Kyrie," he grumbled. Kyrie almost flinched away but managed to disguise the almost flinch as a cold chill.

After five minutes of hearing Fred and Victoire screaming about who could scream more loudly (Victoire, no competition.), Teddy opened his mouth. "I guess it depends on whether the other person can forget about it. If Victoire did that to me, I'd be able to forgive her in an instant. Especially if there was no way she could know. But she would never be able to forgive me. You'd forgive Fred and I am one hundred percent sure he would do the same for you. You're both far too relaxed." Then his shoulders relaxed, as if he solved every problem in the world with those few words. And for Kyrie, he probably had.

"You're a godsend," she said, shaking his shoulders one more time before running and tackling Fred Weasley.

"What does that mean?" Teddy asked, but shook his head and returned to Victoire. "My best friend is one strange girl," he said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

"Oh, come on. Did you not hear my screaming? My cousin is far stranger. I won that competition by decibels!" Victoire huffed.

"I BEG TO DIFFER," screeched Fred from across the way. His hands laced with Kyrie's, making it impossible for her to plug her ears in the din, and no matter how hard she tugged he would simply not let go. "I SIMPLY LET YOU WIN SO THAT I DIDN'T HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOUR OBNOXIOUS VOICE."

"WELL, AT LEAST I DON'T SOUND LIKE A FIVE-YEAR-OLD GIRL WHEN I YELL," Vic countered poisonously. "MAYBE I'M WRONG BUT I COULD HAVE SWORN MOST BOYS YOUR AGE WENT THROUGH PUBERTY A FEW YEARS BACK."

The cousins were both standing, slowly advancing upon each other, threatening to rematch their vocal talents. Their respective partners attempted everything they could think of to avoid such a holocaust, and Ted even got down on his knees, begging for some peace and quiet. Victoire, competitive to the point of obsession, was only slightly amused. But Kyrie, ever the problem solver, eventually suggested that the two compete in a silence contest.

"What a wonderful, wonderful idea," Teddy agreed in a millisecond. "I mean, I bet NEITHER of them could win that one!"

Kyrie grinned knowledgeably. He always tried to get people hooked by their pride- and it usually worked. Even with her, even when she knew what he was doing. She winked at him. Fred and Vic glared at each other, pointedly silent, and far too pointedly to noticed their kissing mates sneak into a corner and laugh at them.


	9. Never Let Someone Else Name Your Chapter

Chapter Nine: Never Let Someone Else Name Your Chapters (Especially When They Are Laaaame)

"Kiss me again?" Kyrie asked, laying down by the far side of the bars. Teddy and Vic sat at the other end, curling each others' hair, it looked like.

"You freaked last time," Fred said logically, tracing a finger down the side of her face. "I don't want to inspire another bout of "let's talk to Teddy and ignore Fred...dy"," Fred finished with a grimace.

"That was awful!" Kyrie laughed, smoothing a hand down her face. She could laugh, sure, but to be as hysteric as she wanted to be would probably earn her an extra foot rub or something. Blowing Abel's cover would be lovely, but Fred's life was too high a price to pay for it.

"Yeah, well," Fred said with a shrug. "Your frequent absences with the Flop have kind of deprived me of humor." The flash of pain that overtook his face told her the truth. That was a joke, but that joke held more than a little bit of truth.

"Hey, hey," she said, talking like she would to a terrified horse. She gripped his right cheekbone. "I only do what I have to. And only because he... threatens you." A half-truth from a half-Kyrie. She wondered briefly if Abel got to go home to his wife for his day off. She hadn't seen a ring, of course, but maybe he was just getting into character.

"I can take care of myself," Fred said. That's when Kyrie knew today would be a fighting day. His male ego was hurt. He would ruin her only day with him for who knows how long because he was an asshole. Well, she wasn't having it.

Victoire told her a year ago, when Kyrie was dating some Hufflepuff Quidditch player (Robby?), that the only way to get a guy to agree to something sometimes was to kiss them into submission. Then, it seemed unnecessarily underhanded. Now, it seemed time wise

So, to say Fred's eyes lit up only in surprise would be an understatement, but not a lie. To say Kyrie got what she wanted would be the truth. But she only had hours, not days. She only had moments, not life events. These were the times she was going to have to look back on when Winthrop became more and more of an asshole.

Sometimes people changed. Often it's noticed. More often, it is not.

This moment was an example of the latter.

Because after a fake Kyrie had infiltrated the group, and Fred's mouth, they still didn't notice anything. Maybe it was the strict turnip-only diet scrambling their brains or something, but Kyrie was sure this Abel guy couldn't just waltz into the lives of her friends match her perfectly. Surely he couldn't speak with the same nuances, move in the same way, look at Fred with the same eyes.

No one could look at Fred the way she did. It was a physical impossibility, because when she saw him, all the cliche dreamy eyes came into play, and she heard yodeling in the background because yodeling was nice and-

Right...Winnie had obviously drugged her. Why else would she be comparing their forearms and thinking about yodeling?

"Whoa, you two definitely need to breathe or something!" Victoire ever so tactfully voiced her opinion from across the cell. She sat with Ted's head in her lap, combing through his shockingly lime green hair. Kyrie never remembered it so vibrant. "You've been going at it for three minutes at least."

Reluctantly, Fred pulled away from her embrace and sat up. He wiped his mouth with a hand before speaking. "Sounds like somebody's jealous. Perhaps you should attend to your girl there, Teddy. She appears to be craving physical attention."

"Mmph," Ted shrugged. This gesture earned him a caring smack on the forehead from Vic.

"And the fact that you two have been sitting there keeping the time makes it even worse," Kyrie couldn't help but add.

"We," Teddy said, flailing his arms directionlessly and smacking Victoire in the face, "Oh, damn, sorry!" She murmured something forgiving and he continued. "We! Are above such frivolous attention-seeking activities! We show our l- care for each other by more mature methods, including cleaning the gutters and carefully worded love letters!"

The turnips were definitely getting to them, Kyrie thought, letting out a bemused grunt anyway.

"Theodore!" Fred said, stumbling up to stand, chest puffed out on wobbly legs. "I challenge you."

Kyrie groaned. "Don't do this, Fred," she muttered, but if he heard her he ignored her.

"I challenge you to... A kissing match!"

Ted perked up even as Victoire sighed. She and Kyrie exchanged glances. They might not get along, but they both knew when to be exasperated with their... boyfriends?

"You're on!" Teddy answered, wrapping his left arm around Victoire's shoulders. It was smushed a bit uncomfortably between the bars and his girlfriend's body, but he decided to disregard it.

"Well, you're on more!" Fred countered, sneering badly. He obviously needed practice, Kyrie thought with a smirk.

In fact it was this thought that lost them the entire contest. Because when you're thinking about your boyfriends lack of proficiency in a certain facial expression, you're not liable to be completely, or even partially, prepared for the onslaught of a kissing contest.

So while Victoire was saving up oxygen, or getting all of her sighing out of her system, or whatever it was Kyrie didn't have a chance to do, Kyrie was still thinking about where sneering lessons took place (probably dungeons or other darkened evil lairs) and who would be the best teacher (a Malfoy or Black, no competition). So Fred's lips pressing against hers were merely a pleasant surprise, not something to continue at risk of losing to Teddy Lupin.

Strangely enough, Kyrie and Fred barely lost. The couple obviously enjoyed long kisses more than the other couple, since Kyrie pulled away just seconds before Teddy would have. She smiled at Fred even as his face dropped.

"We woooon!" Teddy hooted, shaking Victoire's left shoulder. Vic turned the right side of her lips up, but did no hooting.

"THAT was the competition?" Kyrie asked, completely flustered.

"Yeah," Fred grumped. "That was the competition."

"That's pretty lame," she muttered, shrugging.

"So, does the winning couple get a prize?" His voice came from directly behind her, through the bars of the prison she had shared with her friends, for just a little while. "Or have you two just earned some bragging rights?" The Flop lifted his hands and made the My Name In Lights gesture. "Horniest Filthy Blood Traitors...it has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?"

The two pairs jumped from each other like they had been caught doing something illegal in their happiness. Death Eaters were a definite anti-aphrodisiac. Smug, Winthrop shoved his arms through the bars and slumped there, a lazily wicked smile plucking at the corners of his mouth.

"And what the hell do you want?" Vic snapped, hands on hips.

"My, you're a high-maintenance one, aren't you? Not so pretty without your make-up and shampoo though. In fact, you could all use a bath. You're starting to stink up the whole place."

Kyrie didn't like the look in his eyes. Usually high-strung and almost childish in his energy and posture, Winthrop oozed calm. Something must have gone very right for him, and very wrong for them. Could it be the footrub thing? Kyrie wondered.

"Well, answer her, won't you?" Fred snarled. "What do you want?"

"My Kyrie, of course." He beckoned, and a stone dropped in her stomach with each curl of his finger. "We need to talk."

With leaden limbs she stood, her fingertips clinging to Fred's until they were too far apart to reach. As though she was leaving her body behind her: that is how she left her friends. The prison door squawked open and she walked through it. Then she was frog-marched down the prison hall with his hand over her eyes and his stagnant breath in her ear. Open door, close door. Woods. Apparition. Another hall. Another door. The baby-powder bed again.

Kyrie stared blankly at the cheerful sheep and giraffes on the sheet and realized something interesting. "The animals don't move."

"Yeah, they're Muggle sheets. Whatever." He offered no further explanation, though he crossed his arms and tilted his head in a way that he had never done before. "You did well today. Apart from snogging that freak."

Kyrie turned away from him and closed her eyes, picturing Fred's smile, trying to ingrain his face into her eyelids. The Flop could call Fred whatever he wanted, and it wouldn't change anything. She would still be a plunger with a traitorous Weasley and not him. "I suppose you want my feet now or something?" She felt like she could go for a footrub anyway.

And finally Winnie could not take it any more. He rushed to her side with swinging arms. "Can I gloat first?" He gushed. "I'm not allowed to tell you but I really want to. Oh, damn my father, it isn't like you can do anything."

Kyrie's voice took an a tone that hadn't been used for a long while. "What. The hell. Are you talking about?"

"We've got Potter! Yes, that's right, I'm not kidding. He turned himself in last night! We had a little, er...celebration I guess you can say, and we couldn't just leave you alone for hours on end. Smart girl like you, you'd have been out and killing somebody. So, we took care of you. And Potter too."

Now, no one would ever say that Kyrie Orlowe was a stupid girl. But once in a while, everyone just forgets to think. It's like our basic primal instincts, to just react, kick in.

So, she laughed. Directly in Winnie the Flop's face. With complete abandon.

"Oh, my Godric!" she sputtered, after a few seconds. "Woo!" she shook her head and exhaled. "For a few seconds I thought about taking you seriously! You guys! Killed Harry Potter! The Boy Who Lived Twice! Oh man!"

Winthrop flopped backwards, bouncing on the bed for a few seconds with his legs spread widely, his arms splayed behind him, supporting his lolling head. He counted the bumps in the ceiling until Kyrie's laughter died out.

It actually took 24 bumps for silence to spread through the room. She cleared her throat, focusing on Winthrop's strange calm. "You... were joking... right."

"Ohh, of course darling. You know my great sense of humor. I joke with you all the time," Winnie said, continuing his stare at the ceiling but abandoning the count.

His sarcasm slowed down Kyrie's comprehension for a few reasons. The first being that it was completely out of character, and the second being it was said completely seriously. Not an ounce of exaggeration or derision leaked into his words. There was nothing on which to latch.

"H-how?"

Denial is, of course, the first step.

This snapped Winnie out of his ceiling-watch. After all, every villain wants to explain his evil plan, even if they can't beforehand. He propped himself up with his hands and stared with rapt concentration at Kyrie. She backed up, but he started talking.

"We set up a meeting point, the direct middle of the Forbidden Forest by Hogwarts. The Apparation blocks are completely nonexistent that far into the forest, and it was close enough to civilization Potter would trust us." He stood up, his attention never swaying from Kyrie. She shuffled backwards, towards the dresser. "He met us there, without any tricks for once. He probably didn't tell his little lackeys again, but this time they weren't sharp enough to catch on. He was alone, on fair ground, and we loved it. We thought about rushing him, all of us, just completely stampeding the bastard." He stepped again, this time a much larger length and with an upward twitch of the mouth. "But we didn't. My father, can you imagine that? MY father! We elected my very own dad to kill the boy who lived! And he did! He made history," Winnie hissed, taking a final step forward. Kyrie stepped back, only to be propelled forwards into Winnie, who, with his arms spread, welcomed the almost-voluntary-feeling embrace. She grasped him to keep upright, staring over his shoulders with canary-caught-by-the-cat eyes.

Winnie could almost forget the propelling charm he'd set on the dresser and fancy she could stand him.

"We killed Harry Potter!" he whispered, squeezing every muscle in his body as tightly as he could around his hostage.

Kyrie struggled in this position for a few minutes before Winnie stepped back with a smile. "And don't think I've forgotten about that nice little foot rub!" Winnie teased, wiggling his right index finger at the poor girl. "I just need to delay it. There are some more celebrations. I'll be back soon!"

And he pranced out of the room to plan the destruction of the last little corner of Kyrie Jackson Orlowe's world.

Victoire Weasley's throat was sore from all the screaming, but she would never admit it with her cousin Fred still around. Maybe she would say something about it if Fred died and his body was eaten by an army of flesh-eating slugs, but otherwise, a complaint would never pass from her lips. Well, of course she could still mention how sleeping on a floor was screwing up her back, and that they had never gotten those baths the Flop had mentioned, but nothing about her flaming throat.

"Oh, I'm so bored," Vic sighed. "Teddy, do something interesting why don't you?" She slumped against the bars of their prison with Ted's head resting in her lap. She played with his hair and bumped her own skull absently against the bars. It was the time of day when Kyrie had been missing for a while and everyone was a bit ill at ease.

From across the cell, Fred groaned. "I wish I had a turnip on my person, dear cousin of mine. Then I would shove it so far down your esophagus that you would never bother me again with your mindless blathering."

"Oh, I would certainly shove a turnip into one of your body cavities but it would be up your-"

"Enough," Ted whined. "You're making my ears hurt and besides...you're making my ears hurt."

A jumble of footsteps echoed down the hall, and the quibbling fell silent. Normally when Kyrie returned, she was escorted by only one Death Eater. This time, a whole mob of the black-clad lunatics was funneling down the narrow prison hall. The trio was immediately alerted by the change, and they shrank back into the shadows of their cell, waiting. Perhaps, Vic mused, Kyrie had finally managed to castrate the Flop, and his fellows were coming for the reason, it certainly wouldn't prove to be good. She crouched by Teddy's side and peered up at the forest of black silhouettes gathering on the other side of the prison bars. Just barely, she could make out Kyrie's crown of frizzy hair among the cloaks and masks.

"Hello there, little ones." The sickening yet familiar voice of the bearded man came from somewhere to the left. "Do you like your game of playing house here with us?"

Victoire itched to hurl an insult at the man through the bars, but thought better of it when she noticed the upturned corners of eyes through the Death Eater masks. Every now and then, the hint of a smile flashed from behind the mask lips. Something awful had happened, Vic realized, but instead of letting the realization stun her into a stupor, she took action.

"What's going on out there?" she demanded of the smug group. In one movement, she stood and swooped across to the bars of their cell. "It's useless to toy with us. Just say what you're going to say anyway, and give us back Kyrie."

"Oh my," the bearded man sliced through the mob to face his prisoner. "I forgot how feisty you were Miss Weasley. Sometimes I wonder why my son didn't pick you..." His eyes lingered on Vic's smudged and dirty face, then flicked to Kyrie's tear-stained one. During the conversation, the mob had pushed Kyrie forward until she was clearly visible...until her distress was obvious to the group inside the cell.

"Kyrie?" Fred shuffled forward, out of the shadows, and gaped hopelessly at her. Through all the mayhem of their abduction, Kyrie had never been so upset. "What have they done to you?"

Kyrie only shook her head, lips quivering. Tears pooled in her eyelashes and dripped down onto her hands. "It's...they've got. It's Harry."

Without any explanation, Victoire knew the implications of her frirend's words, and she was quite sure that the fire in her throat was traveling along her nerve endings now, and the world grew fuzzy, dark. She backed away, head shaking. She fell into the waiting arms of Teddy, who had sprung up from his spot when he saw Kyire's tears. But he couldn't comfort Kyrie. His dark-haired friend was again swallowed by the mob of Death Eaters. It was Victoire who he could reach, so he wrapped his arms tightly around her trembling frame. He took the beating as Vic's Weasely blood finally stirred up a reaction in her, and her fists pummeled into his sides.

"Let me at them!" She screeched, louder than she had ever been in the shouting contest with Fred. Throbbing throat be damned. "I'll rip the bars in half. I'll shred them into bits for telling such a lie to her!"

"Vic, stop it! Please stop it now!" Ted pleaded, as he did with her all too often. "You'll only get us into more trouble!"

An ungodly explosion of sound jarred all the bones in Victoire's body, and she fell to her knees, silenced. Behind her, Teddy stood with all the strength of a puppet with cut strings, slumped and slack-jawed. Along with Fred and Vic, he looked with slightly dead eyes toward the source of the sound.

Winnie the Flop stood with the stance of a boxer, wand pointed into the cell, into the center of the hole he had blown through the bars. He wore the strangest expression, and it was apparent that not even the other Death Eaters had been expecting the man's actions. All was calm. All was quiet, save for the gentle sobbing of Kyrie, muffled by thick cloaks and bodies. "Well," Winnie seemed to say to himself. "Now that we've got the shutting up part sorted out, let's get to the bragging part." He twirled his wand, pausing for effect like the complete douche that he was. "Your precious Boy Who Lived is now the Old Fool Who Croaked."

Kyrie broke into a fresh set of wails. Vic had never seen her this upset, not even at her grandmum's funeral, but this was a different sort of situation. Personally, Victoire didn't think she had the ability to cry. The amount of saline and energy required was beyond her body's means; instead her face grew bright red and she forgot how to breathe, sort of like her first kiss.

Beside her, Teddy Lupin faded, quite literally. His skin turned ashy and his hair swirled to black.

Fred sat down very slowly, as though underwater, and looked at his hands. "Not another one," he mumbled.

"Party's over!" It was the ringleader's rare voice. Vic hadn't caught a whiff of Boss since Kyrie and Fred became plunger buddies. She looked up to see the slightly familiar figure bearing over The Flop, clearly not pleased with this new development. "Winthrop! I told you to waste no time in getting these blood-traitors the hell out of here! We are on a time limit."

The Flop's oversized ego shrank a bit under the scrutiny of Boss. "Yes, sir," he said, bowing his head. Without another word, he turned to the prisoners, wand aloft. "Somebody get Kyrie, won't you?" Wearing an almost bored expression, he stunned first Ted, then Fred. He leveled his wand on Victoire and the left side of his mouth quirked up in a smirk. "See you around, sweetheart."

Vic caught a glimpse of the mob turning on her friend, like so many grindylows surrounding a goldfish in an overcrowded tank, before a jet of sparks hit her in the chest and she closed her eyes, never to see Winnie the Flop again.


	10. TEH

AN: Last chapter! We're writing a sequel we may or may not post. Who knows.

Chapter Ten?: TEH

Teddy Lupin awoke with a sneeze, grass tickling his nose. Damn, he hoped he wasn't allergic, but he was allergic to everything, and with his luck-

Wait a second... Grass?

Wasn't he knocked out on the floor of a new prison?

Or in heaven? Hell? Where ever particularly unspectacular wizards with unhealthy tastes in witches went after a band of insane Death Eaters murdered them?

"Teddy, you waking up yet?" Kyrie whined, nudging his pink and white streaked hair with an unshoed foot. Teddy blinked his eyes open. Where had she lost the other shoe? Suddenly both of her feet were bare, tickling his cheekbone in the dense, dark grass...

Which brought back up the question... Grass?

He scrambled up to sit awkwardly on his right trainer, his left sprawled in front of him. "Did they... What kind of trick is this?" he asked, seeing Fred, Vic and Kyrie sitting in a circle with him. Victoire, to his left, was swirling a lock of hair around her left hand, staring at him very disinterestedly. Fred, across from him, looked slightly less discombobulated than Teddy himself. And Kyrie, to his direct right, maybe an uncomfortably close right, even for such a good friend, stared at him completely unsympathetically. But at least, unlike Fred and Victoire, she stared right at him, certainly, without any trace of dazed confusedness.

"They let us go, Sleeping Beauty," Kyrie affirmed, nodding her head. "All of you seem to have some kind of problem understanding-"

"Sleeping beauty?" Fred snapped out of it. "Cliche alert!" He smiled like a perfectly toasted marshmallow- not burnt and crisp but melty and sticky.

Kyrie crinkled her nose. "You're silly," she informed him, smiling fractionally and glancing away.

"Well, where are we?" Teddy asked, hoping to restore some sort of order to the fractured group. "We might be away from those crazies or not, but sitting in this meadow forever won't help anything." He wobbled to his feet and brushed dying grass from his already beaten up clothing. A stain stretched around his left knee and up the back a few centimeters, tears spotted his jeans like freckles dotted a Weasley, and they smelled like they'd been dragged through a combination of mud, shit, and blood.

Well.

"Good idea," Kyrie agreed, standing up more steadily. She stuck a hand out for Fred, who used it to propel his face into hers. Not only his lips met hers, but also his forehead. They shook off the jolt and laughed, but Teddy was already thinking of directions. They weren't really in a meadow, but more of a valley. The ground curved up to either side of them, and the fold of earth the trees that surrounded them nestled into went on for longer than he could see. He scratched his hip, wondering whether they were in an Apparate-safe zone and how to tell, when he felt it.

The familiar presence of his wand. Duh.

"We're idiots," Teddy proclaimed, flourishing his wand. Kyrie's mouth widened at each side and deepened, her classic "I'm stupid" face, even as Fred shook his head and Victoire blinked widely.

A few spells and not a few self-deprecating remarks later, the four teens Apparated soaking wet at Shell Cottage.

"I can't believe you side-Apparated us all into a freaking hurricane," Victoire grumbled, shaking her head. "How does that eve-"

The door swung open and two red heads collided in a flurry of hugs. "Oh, thank Godric some good has come of this," George grumbled into his son's hair, clutching his grimy sweater close.

"Dad, Kyrie said you're dashing," Fred mumbled into his dad's shoulder.

George guffawed, drawing away from his son. "Then what's this I hear about you two plunging?"

Fred choked on something. "Uuh- what!"

While the two Weasley men reunited humorously, Bill and Fleur clustered around their eldest daughter, even as Dominique and Louis careened, squealing, from the cottage. Teddy and Kyrie scuffed their feet, whistling and staring at the troublingly grey skies. But only for a moment, before George and Bill swept down upon the two kids themselves.

"We were so worried about you all!" Fleur called above the two Weasley brothers. "Even George-"

"Welllll! I think that's enough about that!" George interrupted, grinning widely down at Kyrie and Teddy. "So, what's this I hear about you being wildly attracted to your boyfriend's old man?" George asked.

"Huh?" Kyrie asked, staring blankly at the redhead.

Laughs obviously long unused escaped the throats of the adults.

Harry Abel Khensley, Abel, to everyone, was a simple man with simple tastes. He liked violent Quidditch matches, pure blood philosophies, and full-figured, pure-blood witches. So, how he ended up 'hanging out' with a bunch of blood traitors at least twenty years his junior and dating the lanky red head just flummoxed him.

Some people would stop their daily life of deception to consider that maybe, just maybe, it was karma, or some other strange phenomena, but not Abel. He knew he was on the right track to the elimination of blood traitors and blood impurities, and-

He also knew he couldn't keep up the deception long.

Relationships didn't last on snogging. He had plenty of experience in relationships that failed, and they all had excellent snogging sessions. And he didn't even like the snogging in this one.

And that was how he ended up at this pub, full of blood traitors and mudbloods and all kinds of mess ups, waiting for that one lanky red head to stride up and kiss him, oneee last time...

He'd have to be nice about it. He couldn't rub it in like he wanted to, or claim to be lesbian. He couldn't attract attention and he had to stay close. The Death Eaters won the last round, but he was their assurance for the next round.

"Kyrie!" Fred chirped, leaning across the tall round table to peck him on the lips before perching on the stool. "What's up? Your owl was really insistent."

"Well, Fred. I wanted to do this away from prying eyes, and before anything else could...stop me." Abel made sure to add a touch of sadness to his voice, to let the kid know that this was serious business. He hoped Weasleys weren't the crying sort.

A vague sort of realization took hold of Fred's face and yanked his jaw down. "S'wrong?" The kid sat across from him and waved for the waiter. "Let's talk about it over a butterbeer," he suggested.

Abel suppressed the urge to gag: butterbeers were the worst, but his female counterpart obviously enjoyed the wretched brews. "Sure, but Fred...dear." He took the boy's terribly freckled hands and fluttered his eyelashes a bit. "Maybe I should say what I have to say before you go off ordering me a drink. We might not be best buddies after-"

The Weasley yanked his hands away and snorted. "Don't be ridiculous Kyrie. I know what this is, and I don't see why we can't enjoy a drink together."

It couldn't possibly be that easy. "Fred, are you quite sure that you know why I brought you here?"

"You're breaking up with me, Kyrie. I get it. I completely understand. We started this as prisoners of war for God's sake. We rushed into it, and maybe it was stupid." He sighed and looked away from Abel long enough to order two pints of butterbeer from an impatient waiter. When he turned back, his eyes were misty. "But I think it was completely worth it."

Touching, Abel thought. Almost sickening. "Yes, that's...exactly what I was thinking, Fred. It's for the best really." The butterbeers arrived and he sipped valiantly, refusing to look into the eyes of the lanky boy sitting across from him. "This is really awkward." Abel spouted out the little giggle he had been practicing while the others were asleep.

Fred shrugged. "It doesn't have to be."


End file.
